China Change, June 30, 2016     A Recap of Guo Feixiong’s Arrest, Sentencing, and Treatment in Prison Guo Feixiong was arrested on August 13, 2013, for his role in the Southern Weekly protest at the beginning of that year, and his campaign to demand that China ratify the The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which China signed in 1998 but has never ratified. He was tried in November 2014, but it wasn’t until a year later that a sentence was announced. To deliver a harsher sentence, the court, in an unprecedented and preposterous move, added a second charge at the last minute of the trial, and Guo was sentenced to 6 years in prison for “gathering a crowd to disrupt order […]

China Change, published: November 27, 2015   On August 8, 2013, Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄, real name Yang Maodong [杨茂东]) was arrested and then indicted on charges of “gathering a crowd to disrupt order in a public place.” The case stems from Guo’s activism around the “Southern Weekend” incident, in which he made speeches outside the newspaper’s offices, and later that year he initiated a campaign demanding that the National People’s Congress ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. On November 28 last year he and co-defendant Sun Desheng (孙德胜) were tried without a verdict. On Friday November 27, after three postponements over the course of 12 months, the Tianhe court in Guangzhou has pronounced its verdict, with Guo Feixiong sentenced to six years […]

By Xiao Guozhen, published: July 23, 2014 This is China Change’s second profile of Guo Feixiong. Read the one by Xiao Shu.    On August 8, 2013, Guangzhou-based rights activist Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄, a.k.a. Yang Maodong) disappeared. Ten days later following a sustained uproar on social media, his sister finally confirmed his criminal detention upon receiving a notice of such from the Chinese police for allegedly “assembling a crowd to disrupt order in a public place.” Assembling a crowd? Disrupting order? Where? People familiar with Guo Feixiong wondered, including myself. His lawyer at that time, Sui Muqing (隋牧青), explained: the allegation has to do with  street demonstrations in support of the Southern Weekend at the beginning of the year. Before him, in Beijing, starting that spring, the New […]

Published: July 7, 2014 Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄, pen name of Yang Maodong 杨茂东) is a pioneer of China’s rights movement. Just released in September, 2011, after serving a five-year prison term on trumped-up charges, he was criminally detained again in August, 2013, in Guangzhou. His trial is expected soon. — The editor   Guangdong Province, Guangzhou Municipal People’s Procuratorate for the Tianhe District Indictment                GZ Tianhe Procuratorate criminal indict. (2014) No. 1343   Defendant Yang Maodong (a.k.a.  Guo Feixiong), male, born August 2, 1966, ethnic Han, undergraduate university education level, ID number: 42010219660802****, place of household registration: [redacted by translators], Hanyang District, Wuhan Municipality, Hubei Province. Was sentenced on November 14 to a five-year prison term by the […]

By Xiao Shu, published: July 7, 2014   Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄, pen name of Yang Maodong)  was arrested on August 8, 2013, and indicted on June 19, 2014, on charges of “gathering a crowd to disturb order in a public place.” Specifically, he is accused of organizing a demonstration outside the Southern Weekly headquarters during the paper’s New Year Greetings incident in January 2013, and of planning to hold signs in eight cities in the spring of 2013 calling for officials to disclose assets and for China to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. But cowardly, the indictment made no mention of his call for press freedom, asset disclosure and the ratification of ICCPR. His lawyer Sui Muqing stated that the case […]

By Bao Tong, published: October 24, 2013 While the Chinese Communist Party has been crusading against the universal values domestically, the Chinese government is vigorously seeking to become a member of the UN Human Rights Council this fall. We laud the latter’s aspiration. As a Chinese citizen, I hope China will fulfill its wish. But China is a big country with a large population where the rights of its 1.3 billion people have neither been guaranteed nor protected. This compromises the implementation of the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The only impediment comes from China itself. The Chinese government signed the ICCPR 15 years ago, but over the last 15 years, it has not ratified the Covenant that would have been a […]