Rights groups press China over trials of 2 quake critics
By Edward Wong, New York Times | August 6, 2009
BEIJING - Human rights advocates are calling on the Chinese government to cancel the criminal trials of two men who pushed for official investigations into the causes of widespread school collapses during the devastating 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province. The trial of one of the men began yesterday but adjourned without a verdict.
The defendant in that trial, Huang Qi, a well-known blogger and civil rights campaigner, is accused of possessing state secrets, a charge that carries a sentence of five years to life. The second defendant, Tan Zuoren, a writer and also a prominent rights advocate, is facing a potential five-year sentence if convicted of subversion and is scheduled to go on trial Aug. 12. The two charges are broad ones that the Chinese government often uses to silence people who publicly challenge the government, which remains highly sensitive to the issue of the collapsed schools more than one year after the earthquake.
“These trials are not about a reasonable application of the law, but about silencing government critics whose work has considerable public benefit and sympathy,’’ Sophie Richardson, the Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group based in New York, said in a written statement released Tuesday. “The government is likely seeking to squelch those who cause it embarrassment, but in the process it is undermining domestic and international confidence in its ability to cope in a transparent way with natural disasters.’’
Huang’s wife, Zeng Li, said in a telephone interview last evening that her husband’s trial began at 10:30 a.m. and continued for three hours. It was unclear last night when the trial would resume. Huang’s trial is closed to the public.
The May 2008 earthquake that rippled out from Sichuan was the most devastating natural disaster in China in decades, killing nearly 69,000 people and leaving about 18,000 missing, all of whom are presumed to be dead, according to official estimates.
Initial reports said that about 7,000 schoolrooms collapsed and as many as 10,000 children may have perished.
Many of the schools collapsed even though buildings next to them remained standing, a development that grieving parents and advocates attributed to shoddy construction and corruption. Officials in Sichuan said the earthquake itself was at fault, not bad construction.
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