China quake activist sentenced on subversion charges

A BBC article reports that Tan Zuoren, a Chinese activist, has been sentenced to five years in jail. One of Tan's lawyers, Pu Zhiqiang, said that "all of the proceedings were linked to 4 June (1989)." Tan was officially charged with igniting "subversion" related to the governmental suppression of the pro-democracy movement of the Tiananmen Square incident. However, Tan's supporters and human rights groups -- notably Amnesty International -- say that his investigation related to the construction-related causes of the 2008 Sichuan quake is the real reason for his conviction. Among the 80,000 that died in the 2008 earthquake, many were schoolchildren killed by the collapse of several thousand school buildings. Grieving parents and allegations of corruption in the school construction led to much public support for Tan's research, a fact that Roseann Rife, of Amnesty International, likely influenced the judicial decision to not include mention of the quake in the verdict, for fear of public backlash. Wang Quinghua, Tan's wife, said that "this isn't justice" and Pu said that Tan planned to appeal. Chinese artist and fellow activist for earthquake victims, Ai Weiwei, said that he thought this would be "a very important case for China...It shows the Chinese legal system has taken a big step backwards. Tan's crime was entirely one of speech, of conscience."

This case reveals a sad state for civil society in China. Like the situation of AIDS activist Wan Yanhai  who left China because of governmental pressure, this case involves undue suppression of interest groups and independent research. Yet Wan left the country as a preventive measure and was never arrested like Tan. In conducting research in the failed construction of schools, Tan was responding to public concerns, unlike the Chinese government who did not hold up promises of investigation. Chinese citizen-state relations are further compromised by the fact that Tan's original trial from last year was adjourned without a verdict, and this trial's verdict was decided upon and read out in about a mere ten minutes. A continual censorship of governmental criticism lends injury to the administration's legitimacy.

(Photo credit: Shanghaiist; BBC)

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