BEIJING (AP) – Police scuffled with protesters and journalists at a Beijing courthouse Monday as prominent rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang stood trial on charges of provoking trouble and stirring ethnic hatred with commentaries posted online that were critical of the ruling Communist Party.
Chinese protesters and foreign rights groups said Pu’s trial at the No. 2 Beijing Intermediate Court amounted to political persecution, and foreign governments including the U.S. called for his release. The trial concluded about midday, and Pu’s lawyer Shang Baojun said a verdict and sentence would be delivered at a later date.
“Pu Zhiqiang is a lawyer with a conscience,” activist Yang Qiuyu said in a brief interview outside the venue while a policeman tried to grab him. “This is why he is now under arrest. We support him, and that means that we are also defending our own rights.”
Pu was active in defending free speech and represented dissident artist Ai Weiwei in a tax evasion case that Ai’s supporters said was politically motivated. He also was instrumental in pushing for the eventual abolishment of the labor camp system, which allowed police to lock up people for up to four years without a trial.
About 50 protesters had gathered at the courthouse along with a couple dozen journalists and about a dozen Western diplomats, but all of them were denied entrance. Police and plainclothes security officers wearing yellow smiley-face stickers pushed journalists and protesters away from the court entrance area. They threw one of the protesters the ground and took away several others.