Niu Tengyu, a 21-year-old maintainer of China’s “Vulgar Wiki” website, was convicted of being the “main culprit” and sentenced to 14 years in prison for allegedly leaking information about Xi Jinping‘s daughter’s identity. According to Niu’s mother, he was lynched and molested by police in a detention center, and other minors involved in the case were also humiliated and threatened. Lawyers representing the case said that several lawyers were threatened with license suspension by the judicial authorities and asked to withdraw from the case. In addition, the prosecution revealed that the case will be forcibly closed at the end of this month and the first instance verdict will be upheld.
Nude photos, sexual harassment Police perverted tactics to humiliate those involved in the case
The “main culprit” in the 2019 Xi Jinping daughter Xi Mingze personal information leak case, 21-year-old Niu Tengyu, recently revealed that he was humiliated by police officers while in custody by taking nude photos, burning his private parts and verbally harassing him. In an interview with the station, Niu Tengyu’s mother said that according to publicly available records from the detention center, Niu Tengyu was beaten to death several times and was taken to the hospital by the police of the detention center.
She said, “A police officer named Chen Quanhui, who was even more rascal, stripped Niu Tengyu naked and then took naked pictures of him with his cell phone, and touched him, saying lewd things like, ‘How handsome you are, if you were a girl we could have had a good day.’ What’s unexpected is that they also burned his lower body with a lighter, hitting him specifically where his skin is tender.”
Niu Tengyu’s mother also revealed that Niu Tengyu was abused in the detention center, including being given only white rice, not allowed to sleep, handwritten “self-reporting materials” under severe torture, and threatened by police not to find a lawyer. Niu Tengyu’s mother said that after writing hundreds of thousands of words, he refused to sign a confession and was beaten again by police, leaving his right arm disabled.
In addition, Niu Tengyu’s mother said that other minors involved in the case were also insulted and abused by the police. In order to prevent Parents from finding out where their children are being held, the police removed the names of the juveniles involved from their records and replaced them with a code: “Absolutely no parents are allowed to know about this, and if they do, they will ask for help from the outside world, so (the case is) very, very secret. The children were deprived of any rights, including the lawyer’s right to meet, a serious violation of human rights, and the children disappeared in secret.”
The lawyer was threatened that the judge of the second trial would force the case to be closed
Niu Tengyu’s mother told the station that the lawyers in the case were threatened by the judicial authorities to withdraw from the case and not to plead not guilty: “They (the judicial authorities) intentionally set the files as secret files to prevent the lawyers from telling the truth when they are defending the case, and only 49 of the total 75 files were given to the lawyers, so there is no way to defend the case. This is to conceal the facts and prevent the lawyers from knowing the truth. I haven’t found a new lawyer yet, and I’ve been threatened (with) the loss of five lawyers.”
Niu Tengyu’s mother said that the day before the first trial, all the lawyers were taken away by the judicial bureau of Maoming, Guangdong Province, under the threat of revoking their licenses and asking them to withdraw from representation. She also revealed that Judge Zhang Shuming called the lawyers directly to say that the second trial would not be held, asking them to submit their defense statements in the absence of the file, and claiming that the case would be dismissed in writing at the end of the month, upholding the original verdict of the first trial.
In late 2020, the first trial in the case of leaking information about Xi Jinping’s daughter sentenced Niu Tengyu to 14 years in prison and a fine of 130,000 yuan, and 23 other people involved in the vile Wiki site received various prison terms, including nine minors. However, judicial authorities refused to hold a second trial. Huang Hanzhong, a lawyer representing the case, told the station that the failure to hold the second trial was a serious violation of the relevant provisions of the current criminal procedure law: “The current procedure law clearly stipulates that if there are objections to the facts and evidence of the case, and if the conviction and sentence of the case are affected, the trial should be held in court. The number of people in this case is large, the case is complex, and many facts in the first trial were not clarified, many lawyers during the first trial to the second trial after reading the case file clearly said to do not guilty defense of the case. According to the law, the trial should be opened.”
Huang Hanzhong believes that the lack of more than one-third of the files obtained by the lawyers during the second trial is a deliberate attempt by the authorities to set obstacles for the lawyers to understand the case, in an attempt to fast-track the case into an iron-clad, unjust case: “Such behavior by the relevant court constitutes an abuse of power and illegally deprives the lawyers of their legitimate right to read the files. In this case, the lawyer is required to submit a reply, but also simple and brutal, in violation of the law.”
Huang Hanzhong said he has been forced to withdraw from the case because of a written notice from the Beijing Judicial Bureau. Huang Hanzhong said that this move by the Bureau of Justice has also seriously undermined the lawyers’ right to practice law.
Wang Yu and her husband, Bao Longjun, who won the U.S. State Department’s International Women of Courage Award earlier this month, were out of touch on the day of the award and are suspected to be involved in the case.
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