Source: Canada's National Newspaper - The Globe and Mail

Date: October 31, 1996

ONE hour after Wang Dan was sentenced to 11 years in prison for trying to overthrow the Chinese government, the official Xinhua news agency released a long interview with the presiding judge explaining his judgment. Now unless the reporters and editors at Xinhua work with an alacrity unknown in the rest of the world, it would seem that the good judge had granted the interview before the trial.

It's no secret that the Chinese government uses its supposedly independent judicial system to make political points. Police and prosecutors often get together long before the trial to determine the verdict. In a high-profile case like Mr. Wang's, senior Communist Party officials are likely to be involved too. There is no such thing as the presumption of innocence. There is no such thing as the right to a proper defence. There is no such thing as the right of habeas corpus.BTiananmen massacre and working for greater political freedom in China. Authorities rearrested him on May 21, 1995, for "disturbing the social order" and held him for 17 months without laying any charge, a gross violation of his civil rights under Chinese law. When a charge was finally brought, it was one of the most severe in the Chinese criminal code: conspiring to overthrow the government.

What was the evidence of this conspiracy? Did Mr. Wang hide guns in his apartment? Did he plot to assassinate China's President? Did he threaten to organize a general strike? Did he lead protesters through the streets? Not quite.

According to the indictment, Mr. Wang conspired to overthrow the government in two main ways. First, he "colluded with hostile overseas forces." What this seems to mean is that Mr. Wang talked or corresponded with Chinese dissidents living in exile in other countries. The indictment offers no evidence that they talked about subverting, much less overthrowing, the government.

Second, he But Mr. Wang's trial was rigged more flagrantly than most. To call it a trial is to lend it an undeserved dignity. This was a farce.

Mr. Wang has been a leading critic of the Chinese government since 1989, when he helped organize the pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square. Sentenced to four years in prison for his role there, he was paroled in February of 1993 and immediately began campaigning for redress for victims of the wrote articles for the foreign press that sought to "incite turmoil" and "create public opinion in support of the overthrow of state power and the socialist system." According to Xinhua, these articles contained "many seditious sentences." One article said that "today's China is like being on the top of a volcano" and "it's time for us to turn our words into actions." Another said the government was censoring the press and suppressing free speech a fact as obvious as the smog in Canton. This was a conspiracy?

By putting on such a charade, China's leaders have once again shown their disdain for the rights of Chinese citizens, their contempt for international opinion and their indifference to the rule of law. Only last December, in a similar satire of justice, authorities sentenced Wei Jingsheng, the country's leading dissident, to 14 years for conspiracy to overthrow the government. He is kept in an unheated cell, under bright lights 24 hours a day.

A similar fate awaits Mr. Wang. He was 21 when he was arrested after Tiananmen Square. If he serves his whole sentence, he will be 38 when he is released. By that time, he will have spent all but 27 months of his adulthood in prison. For what crime?