‘Lies and silence’: Zhao Yan case
p2p news / p2pnet: "Delays, abuses and irregularities" by prosecutors and judges involved in the case against New York Times employee Zhao Yan have again been strongly criticised.
"On 6 June 2006, a judge of the No 2 intermediate people’s court in Beijing told his lawyer Mo Shaoping that it had decided to adjourn the journalist’s case yet again," says Reporters Without Borders.
It should have opened yesterday, says the group but, "Now, we have seen everything in this case: secret detention, lies and silence on the part of the authorities, failure to respect legal timescales and irregularities."
Zhao Yan was laureate of the 2005 Reporters Without Borders press freedom prize and the only fair and reasonable outcome is that all charges are dropped and he’s released, states RWB, going on:
"We particularly condemn the attitude of the prosecutors, who despite the absence of any concrete proof, continue to accuse the journalist of fraud and divulging state secrets. We are also concerned that in the past journalists and dissidents have received heavy sentences from the No 2 Intermediate people’s court in Beijing for offences of opinion.
Zhao has been in prison since September 17, 2004, "falsely accused of having revealed the political retirement of Jiang Zemin to the New York Times before the official announcement," says the story. "The journalist was formally arrested on 20 October 2004 and then charged with ‘divulging state secrets’, a crime punishable by the death penalty, and with ‘fraud’."
Zhao is being held in an isolation cell at the State Security detention centre in Beijing, says RWB, adding that of his medical treatment has been refused, and that his family still hasn’t been allowed to visit him.
Digg this story.
Also See:
Reporters Without Borders – Delays, abuses and irregularities plague Zhao Yan case, June 8, 2006
Zhao Yan – China jails New York Times man, May 17, 2006
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June 11th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
“charged with ‘divulging state secrets’, a crime punishable by the death penalty”
Whth a contradiction!
Cetainly state secrets must be secret. Therefore no one ca know if a given fact is a state secret or not. Then all facts must be presumed to be state secrets for reporters, to be on the safe side?
Can you imagine the Chinese (or Pentagon in the USA) publishing a list of secrets that cannot be divulged without being arrested as a spy.
Then how can a court sentence anyone without revealing the state secret (or is it a secret kangaroo court?) the was allegedly violated?
China (and the USA too) is a dictatorship.