Chinese activists warned over dissident trial

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

AFP
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Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo (L) and his wife Liu Xia in Beijing in 2002.

BEIJING — Reform activists in Beijing said Tuesday they had been warned not to attend the trial this week of leading Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, as European and US diplomats sought access to the hearing.

The 53-year-old writer has been charged with "inciting subversion of state power" after co-authoring Charter 08, a widely circulated petition that called for political reform. He has been in detention for more than a year.

Liu's trial is scheduled to take place Wednesday in Beijing amid fears that officials will rush the case through the court during the Western holiday season in a bid to attract less global attention.

"Officials from the state security bureau came to my house and told me not to go to the trial," said Ding Zilin, the head of an activist group called the Tiananmen Mothers, who lost loved ones in the 1989 crackdown.

"I think it's really unfair -- Liu should not be tried. He is being incriminated for Charter O8, which proves that China needs the charter," said Ding, who also signed the petition.

Bao Tong, once a top aide to former Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang, who was purged for sympathising with the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy demonstrations, also said government officials had told him not to attend the trial.

"I insisted that I am a part of this case -- if Liu Xiaobo is to be tried, then I should be tried as well. They didn't listen to me," he said.

A lone man in Beijing displays a protest slogan on his forehead reading: "oppose the dictators" in support of Liu Xiaobo

Diplomats from EU countries and the United States, which have already voiced concerns over the case, they had applied to attend the hearing.

"The EU has asked to be present at the trial, and we are waiting for an answer," said Nicolas Weeks, first secretary at the embassy of Sweden, which currently holds the European Union's rotating presidency.

"Several EU embassies, including Sweden's, have also applied individually," he told AFP.

Nick Snyder, a spokesman for the US embassy in Beijing, said: "A US embassy official has applied and plans to attend and observe the trial."

The European Union and the United States have urged China to free Liu and end the harassment and detention of political dissidents. Beijing says the calls are "unacceptable."