Human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, who was sentenced to four years in prison for inciting subversion of state power, was accused by the court of publishing an open letter on the Internet attacking state power and the socialist system by his own testimony, which contained fabrications and distorted facts. The verdict also stated that Yu did not object to the facts of the crime and the charges against him, confessed to the crime and repented in court, and asked for a lighter punishment. However, Yu’s wife, Xu Yan, stated that her husband had filed an appeal and had applied for the release of a video recording of the Public Security Bureau’s interrogation of Yu, showing that she did not believe the verdict, which stated that her husband had confessed to defaming the government.
According to international media on September 5, Yu’s wife, Yan Xu, tweeted the verdict on social media that day, noting that Yu’s right hand is disabled and cannot write. She and Yu’s defense attorney visited Yu on September 3 and said that Yu’s “tremor in his right hand remains unresolved and can only be treated when he is free”; that “some police officers threatened him with family members” during his interrogation; and that in 2019, Yu’s right hand was “disabled”. In the period from November 2010 to January 2011, “long periods of starvation,” Xu Yan tweeted.
Xu Yan even tweeted that on the afternoon of September 3, the Jiangsu Higher People’s Court had informed another defense lawyer, Lu Siwei, on September 3 that it would not access the synchronized audio and video recordings of the Xuzhou Public Security Bureau’s interrogation of Yu Wensheng’s lawyers. She questioned why synchronized audio and video recordings could be accessed in other people’s cases, but not in Yu’s. The Jiangsu Provincial High People’s Court refused to give her access to the audio and video recordings in the Xuzhou Public Security Bureau. After the Xuzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau refused to accept her on-the-spot request for access to government information, she mailed the application to authorities.
According to Xu Yan’s verdict, which was made public on Twitter, the Jiangsu Xuzhou Zhongdian People’s Court “held an open trial” last May, but the verdict was not disclosed to the media until more than a year after the trial. Xu Yan described her husband’s case as a secret verdict and has filed an appeal, and her lawyer discussed the second trial with Yu when she visited him on March 3.
The court sentenced Yu to four years in prison and three years of deprivation of political rights, with his sentence set to expire on March 1, 2022, on the grounds that he confessed and admitted his guilt in court.
Yu Wensheng, 53, has represented Falun Gong practitioners and human rights lawyers arrested in the “709 arrests”.
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