Prominent Chinese dissident Hu Jia will soon face trial after prosecutors decided to press subversion charges, his lawyer said on Saturday, as another human rights lawyer close to Hu was freed from brief detention.
Hu, a 34-year-old Beijing-based advocate for AIDS sufferers, Tibetan autonomy and many other causes, was detained by police in late December on the charge of "inciting subversion of state power." Local and foreign human rights campaigners have urged his release ahead of Beijing's 2008 Olympic Games, when the country wants to display its economic and social progress.
But on Friday, officers in the Beijing city procuratorate, or state prosecutor, told Hu's lawyers they had accepted the police case against him and would take him to court. "We were told yesterday by the procuratorate that there'll soon be a trial on the inciting subversion charge," Hu's lawyer Li Fangping told Reuters by phone.
Li said the prosecution case was based on Hu's essays and statements to foreign reporters. "They're accusing him of attacking the socialist system," Li said. Authorities often level the "inciting subversion" charge against dissidents heavily critical of the ruling Communist Party, and conviction generally means a jail sentence of up to several years.
The court is obliged to try Hu now that prosecutors have decided to seek his conviction, Li said. "It is now a question of when," he said. "It could be within the month." Hu's trial is likely to be a focus of intense international attention from human rights groups and governments as Beijing polishes up for the opening of the Summer Olympics on August 8.
Hu, a Buddhist who spent most of last year under house arrest, chronicled his confinement in Internet essays and videos and often spoke to foreign reporters. He and his wife Zeng Jinyan, also an outspoken campaigner, had their first child a couple of months before he was taken away by police in late December.
Last month, New York-based Human Rights Watch issued an essay that Hu and fellow activist Teng Biao wrote last year, denouncing what they called a deterioration in China's human rights before Beijing's Games. "Allowing a country that tramples on human dignity to hold the Olympics does not bring honour to the people of this country, nor does it bring glory to the Olympic Games," they wrote.
A source close to Hu's family said police have told his wife and other family members they should "be prepared" for a trial soon. The source, who requested anonymity, said police told the family they had presented prosecutors with a final case based on Hu's "statements attacking the government".
In what may have been a warning to Hu's local supporters, Teng, a lawyer and lecturer who has taken on many rights cases, was bundled into a car without licence plates on Thursday night, his wife Wang Ling told reporters on Friday. Chinese police released Teng on Saturday after his secretive two-day detention that had attracted criticism from local and foreign rights advocates.