{"id":22029,"date":"2015-12-22T00:34:53","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T00:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/celebrated-chinese-lawyer-handed-suspended\/"},"modified":"2015-12-22T00:34:28","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T00:34:28","slug":"celebrated-chinese-lawyer-handed-suspended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/celebrated-chinese-lawyer-handed-suspended\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrated Chinese lawyer handed suspended sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Beijing court convicts Pu Zhiqiang to three years in prison but in surprise move says the sentence will be suspended.}<\/p>\n<p>A court in Beijing has convicted one of China&#8217;s most famous human rights lawyers over comments he made online, giving him a suspended jail sentence, according to state broadcaster CCTV.<\/p>\n<p>Pu Zhiqiang was sentenced by Beijing&#8217;s No 2 Intermediate People&#8217;s Court on Tuesday for &#8220;inciting ethnic hatred&#8221; and &#8220;picking quarrels and provoking trouble&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The ruling was a three-year prison sentence that was deferred for three years, but observers said the way it was constructed means it is unlikely he will be jailed.<\/p>\n<p>Pu accepted the ruling and will not appeal, CCTV said.<\/p>\n<p>The prominent lawyer, who has represented labour camp victims and dissident artist Ai Weiwei, was detained a year and a half ago in a nationwide crackdown on critics.<\/p>\n<p>His conviction was primarily based on seven social media posts, in total approximately 600 characters, in which Pu criticised government officials and polices between 2011 and 2014.<\/p>\n<p>Amnesty International criticised the guilty verdict as a &#8220;gross injustice&#8221;, but welcomed the deferred sentence.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Clearly it is positive that Pu Zhiqiang is unlikely to spend another night in jail, yet that cannot hide the gross injustice against him,&#8221; William Nee, China researcher at Amnesty International, said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He is no criminal and this guilty verdict effectively shackles one of China&#8217;s bravest champions of human rights from practicing law,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>At least one woman outside the courthouse where the verdict was read was taken away by police in tears as she screamed that Pu was innocent.<\/p>\n<p>Security personnel &#8211; those in civilian dress and uniformed officers &#8211; also pushed and shouted at activists and journalists outside the courthouse.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-10014 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/ef896cc57fb54f3683e13c52f3760eb5_18.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Source:Al Jazeera:[Celebrated Chinese lawyer handed suspended sentence->http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2015\/12\/celebrated-chinese-lawyer-handed-suspended-sentence-151222032640427.html]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Beijing court convicts Pu Zhiqiang to three years in prison but in surprise move says the sentence will be suspended.} A court in Beijing has convicted one of China&#8217;s most famous human rights lawyers over comments he made online, giving him a suspended jail sentence, according to state broadcaster CCTV. Pu Zhiqiang was sentenced by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000071012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-22029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":{"id":2000071012,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22029.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22029.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22029.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22029.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22029.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22029.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000071012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22029"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=22029"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=22029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}