The founder of a group that challenged Communist Party rule with a call for multiparty democracy has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, a human rights group said yesterday.
Former university professor and judge Guo Quan was jailed for “subversion of state power” by a court in Jiangsu province on Friday, the New York-based group Human Rights in China said.
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Democracy activist jailed 10 years for ‘subverting state’
Associated Press in Beijing
18 October 2009
The founder of a group that challenged Communist Party rule with a call for multiparty democracy has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, a human rights group said yesterday.
Former university professor and judge Guo Quan was jailed for “subversion of state power” by a court in Jiangsu province on Friday, the New York-based group Human Rights in China said.
Guo had been detained numerous times since 2007, when he founded the China New Democracy Party, which he claimed had 40 million members. He was arrested in Nanjing, the provincial capital, last November. His wife said at the time that Guo was taken after dropping his son off at school.
Guo’s lawyer has said he was accused of forming an illegal group, recruiting members and publishing articles on the internet to “overthrow the socialist system in the name of helping the weak”.
“This sentence is indefensible from a legal perspective, because using peaceful and rational means to petition cannot be considered subversion of state power,” Guo’s lawyer, Guo Lianhui, told Human Rights in China. “Subversion of state power can only be achieved by armed insurrection.”
A former associate professor at Nanjing Normal University and a former judge in Nanjing, Guo Quan started publishing articles online in 2007 advocating a multiparty democratic system with elections. He addressed them to President Hu Jintao and National People’s Congress chairman Wu Bangguo, Human Rights in China said.
The Communist Party has never allowed a serious challenge to single-party rule. While other political parties exist, they are not allowed to wield real power.
Guo Quan claimed his party had 40 million members, including laid-off workers, farmers who had lost their land, and retired soldiers, but the membership claim could not be verified. His university later fired him, Human Rights in China said.
The Intermediate People’s Court in Suqian could not be reached for comment.
Human Rights in China said the time between Guo’s trial in early August and the verdict exceeded the 1-1/2-month time limit for a court to conclude a case according to the Criminal Procedure Law.
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