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August 5, 2016

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Lawyer gets 7-year jail for anti-China activities

ZHOU Shifeng, a lawyer formerly managing the Beijing-based Fengrui Law Firm, was convicted of subverting state power and sentenced to seven years in prison yesterday.

He was also deprived of his political rights for five years, according to a ruling handed down by the No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court in Tianjin in north China.

Zhou, 51, pleaded guilty and told the court he would not appeal.

Two other men connected to Zhou’s activities were sentenced by the same court on Tuesday and Wednesday.

More than 40 people, including lawyers and journalists from home and overseas, observed yesterday’s trial. None of Zhou’s relatives was present, at his request.

Zhou, from Anyang City, Henan Province, was director of the Beijing-based Fengrui Law Firm, which was suspended from operation in 2015 after a police investigation into several of its employees. Zhou has long been influenced by anti-China forces and gradually established ideas to overturn the country’s political system, said a court statement.

Since 2011, Zhou has attacked the socialist system and the “one country, two systems” policy that applies to Hong Kong and Macau, the two special administrative regions, and incited confrontation, the statement said.

He used the law firm as a front for his subversive agenda, recruited like-minded lawyers and other staff and together they discredited judicial organs, attacked the judicial systems and promoted anti-government sentiment by interfering in and exaggerating sensitive cases.

Along with members of an illegal religious organization, paid protesters, lawyers and others, he plotted and established “strategies, methods and steps” to subvert state power and carried out a series of subversive activities, which endangered national security and social stability, it said. “I plead guilty,” Zhou said in his final statement during the hearing. “My actions have brought instability and risks to society.”

Zhou hired two attorneys, who met with him multiple times before the trial. A pretrial conference was also held to hear the opinions of the prosecution and defense teams.

During the trial, prosecutors presented evidence and witness testimonies, and the defense team did not object, the court said.

According to a prosecution witness, Zhou had recruited two administrative assistants, surnamed Wu and Liu, who actually acted as Zhou’s “civil and martial go-getters.”

“Liu’s duty was to analyze sensitive cases and to identify loopholes, while Wu was responsible for promoting them,” said Huang, who used to work in Zhou’s firm, adding neither were lawyers. Zhou hired them to distort facts, cause confusion and social instability, and attack the country’s judicial system, according to Huang.

In March 2015, while a local court in Hebei Province was hearing an extortion case taken on by Zhou’s firm, he instructed lawyers to take pictures of prosecutors and judges and posted them online, spreading rumors and questioning their moral characters.

Another case used by Zhou occurred in May 2015, when police officer Li Lebin shot dead Xu Chunhe after Xu had continued attacking the police officer despite multiple warnings at a railway station in Qing’an County, Heilongjiang Province. CCTV cameras and follow-up investigations showed Li had acted within the law.

Zhou instructed his employees to post online articles that distorted the facts in an attempt to influence public opinion and misrepresent the incident as police brutality.

At a Beijing restaurant in February 2015, Zhou and other suspects talked about how to oppose the Party and the socialist system, according to Gou Hongguo, who is expected to stand trial in connection with this case.




 

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