Veteran Chinese journalist Gao Yu sentenced to 7 years
Source: Yahoo! News / AP
BEIJING (AP) — A Beijing court sentenced a veteran Chinese journalist to seven years in prison Friday on charges of leaking a document detailing the Communist Party leadership's resolve to aggressively target civil society and press freedom as a threat to its monopoly on power.
The sentence against Gao Yu, 71, comes amid a widening clampdown on free speech that highlights the gap between China's vision of rule of law and Western notions of civil liberties and judicial fairness. The verdict appears to confirm the authenticity of the leaked document, deemed a state secret, which had been reported since June 2013, but never was discussed openly by the leadership.
It verifies widely held assumptions about Communist Party leader Xi Jinping's distrust of any social organization outside party control, as recently manifested in the more-than monthlong detentions of five women's rights activists who planned to start a public awareness campaign about sexual harassment.
Gao had denied the charges, which could have carried a life sentence.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/veteran-chinese-journalist-gao-yu-sentenced-7-years-071735445.html
= new reply since forum marked as read