China Steps Up Crackdown on Dissidents With Jailing of Xu
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China’s ruling Communist Party intensified its crackdown on dissent with the jailing of legal scholar Xu Zhiyong and another prominent dissident saying on Twitter that he was taken away by police.
Xu, the most prominent activist jailed since Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo in 2009, was sentenced by a Beijing court yesterday to four years in prison on charges of gathering a crowd to disturb public order. While he was not given a formal opportunity to respond, Xu, 40, told the court that “the last dignity of Chinese law has been destroyed,” his lawyer Zhang Qingfang said by telephone.