Chen Guangcheng, a move seen as a victory for Chinese Christians supporting his case, BosNewsLife learned Wednesday, November 1.
The court decided to send the case back to the county-level court for a retrial, US funded Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported from Hong Kong.
"I got a call this afternoon from the Yinan county court telling me that the Intermediate People’s Court in Linyi had reached a decision regarding Chen Guangcheng’s case and that that decision had already been delivered to the Yinan court for them to implement," Chen’s lawyer, Li Jingsong, told RFI. It was not immediately clear when he would be released from prison.
In 2005, Chen exposed the local authority "harsh measures" of enforcing the one-child policy in the Linyi area of Shandong Province. Chen filed a class-action lawsuit against Linyi officials on a woman’s behalf and drew attention to the plight of the villagers, said Christian advocacy group China Aid Association in a statement to BosNewsLife.
INTERNET INCIDENT
"Although the law suit he filed was rejected, the incident was publicized on the internet by Time Magazine who interviewed Chen. Three hours after the interview in Beijing, Chen was shoved into an unmarked vehicle by Public Security Agents from his hometown," CAA said.
"They took him back to his village, where he was held under house arrest for months. Chen was removed from his house in March 2006 and formally detained in June 2006 by Yinan County Officials," the group explained.
"They took him back to his village, where he was held under house arrest for months. Chen was removed from his house in March 2006 and formally detained in June 2006 by Yinan County Officials," the group explained.
Chen was sentenced by the Yinan County People’s Court on August 24 to four years and three months’ imprisonment for "willfully damaging property and organizing a mob to disturb traffic."
Lawyers and relatives called the trial an illegal and retaliatory move by local officials angry at Chen’s damning expose of their actions. "The decision did two things," Li told RFA. "One was to overturn the guilty verdict against Chen handed down by the Yinan County Court. The second was to require that the Yinan court carry out a retrial."
"ORIGINAL DECISION"
He claimed the ruling suggests that “the original decision was completely in error and illegal. We can be sure of this. The original verdict has no effect any more. It is obsolete." Li said. "An appeals court will never order a retrial lightly, without a very good reason, especially not in a case that has the sort of international impact that this one has. From the point of view of the defense, this is the best possible result,
Chinese prosecutors and officials have not yet commented. China’s government has consistently denied human rights abuses in the Communist nation.
Chen’s wife Yuan Weijing has reportedly welcomed the news, but she stressed she doubted the retrial would be conducted fairly.
"Even now I am under surveillance," Yuan said. "And I’m not sure about the strongest witnesses for the defense; whether they will come out and testify. Especially the ones who had forced confessions wrung out of them. I am afraid that they have been too intimidated to come out and speak."
"GROUNDBREAKING WORK"
RFA said that Chen’s “groundbreaking work as a self-trained legal advocate on behalf of women suffering forced abortions and other abuses” at the hands of Yinan county family planning officials “earned him praise among socially aware citizens in China.”
But it has also drawn him years of house arrest, surveillance, beatings, and harassment by local officials and the unidentified men they hire as heavies.
Li said the Linyi Intermediate People’s Court’s decision wasn’t just a victory for Chen, who faced house arrest and other alleged abuses including beatings. Li stressed the ruling was "also a victory" for the people of China.
The New York-based Human Rights in China group said in a recent report that the country’s legal system was "being undermined by continual pressures on lawyers, especially those representing clients in sensitive cases involving allegations of official wrongdoing," RFA reported. (With reports from China and BosNewsLife Research).
