Citizen Power for China (also known as Initiatives for China) is shocked to learn that the Chinese regime has handed down a severe sentence of 11 years to Mr. Liu Hui, a brother-in-law of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, in a Beijing suburb court on June 9, 2013, right after the conclusion of the summit between China’s president Xi Jinping and the U.S. president Obama.
We strongly condemn the verdict in this politically motivated case which has been completely fabricated by the Chinese Communist regime in order to further persecute Liu Xiaobo, his wife Liu Xia, and their extended family. Clearly their hope is to bring Liu Xiaobo to his knees, and to eliminate the emergence of China’s Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi, a conspiracy formed in 2010 after Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. At that time China’s national security police threatened his wife, Liu Xia, specifically warning that since her brothers were in business, they could surely find some way to get even. That threat has now come to pass.
We also condemn the fact that the Chinese regime–in a further example of how much human rights has regressed in China–has once again begun to use the barbaric practice of “guilt by association,” and punishing political dissidents’ direct family members or even entire extended family, as was done in feudal China and under the dictator Mao Zedong’s rule.
We emphatically denounce the trial and sentence of Liu Hui, which is not only unjust and unfair, but also illegal even under the Chinese regime’s own laws. The regime has indeed “lost its conscience” as Liu Hui pointed out after hearing his sentence.
We firmly believe that the persecution of Liu Hui has once again exposed the evil nature of the Chinese regime that has no desire for an independent judicial system, rule of law, basic and human rights for Chinese citizens, but a perpetual one-party rule over China, and the regime is willing to do anything to crackdown the opposition.
The Citizen Power for China is determined to launch an international campaign to raise awareness of Liu Hui’s case and to call on the international community, particularly the United States government, not to form a “new type of great power relation” with the Chinese regime, for only when the Chinese regime begins to respect their own people’s constitutional rights, can it be trusted to follow international norms in its international relations.
We pledge to lobby the U.S. government and other democratic countries to hold those individuals who persecute Liu Xiaobo, Liu Xia, Liu Hui and other members of their extended family accountable by banning those human rights abusers from traveling in the U.S. and other democracies, and freeze their directly- or indirectly-controlled assets.
I think denying them the pleasure of travel and other such privileges and economic advantages such as investing in publicly traded companies and what not is something that should be done as soon as possible. But seizing their assets is unjust and reflects a reactionary spirit that would ultimately find ways of persecuting people that are nearly unjust – if not equally unjust – as what is currently going on if the people who are asking for them to be enacted were put into power themselves.