“The high walls of the prison cannot block the expression of freedom”
Considering the facts in the indictment against me, I have no disagreement, except the one which says that I collected more than 300 signatures [for Charter 08] (see “Charter 08, a plea for human rights in China | complete text,” in asianews.it, 26 January 2009), which is inaccurate. I wrote the six articles [cited in the indictment] and participated in Charter 08, but I collected only about 70 signatures and not 300. I did not gather the other signatures. As to the charges I am accused of, I cannot accept them. During this period of more than a year during which I lost my freedom, I have maintained my innocence during questioning by police officers, investigators and judges. I argue my innocence on the basis of China's constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, the political reforms I have advocated and the trend of history.
One important result of China’s reform and open-door policy has been the awakening of Chinese people to their human rights and the rise of civil protection of rights. This has pushed the Chinese government to progress in its thinking on human rights. In 2004, the National People's Congress revised the constitution to "protect and respect human rights", which gave constitutional protection to human rights, as a country ruled by law. The country must respect and protect human rights, according to the powers given to the people in Article 35 of the constitution. My freedom to express different opinions is the right to free speech given to me as a Chinese citizen by the constitution. Not only should it not be limited or removed by the government; on the contrary, it should be respected by the government and protected by the law. Therefore, the accusations against me infringe my basic rights as a Chinese citizen and are against the basic law of China. It is a typical case of "speech crime”. The ancient practice of sending a writer to prison has continued. It should be criticised as unreasonable and against the constitution.
The indictment quotes statements as proof of my "spreading rumours, slandering and in other ways inciting the subversion of the government and overturning the socialist system". "Spreading rumours" means fabricating and creating false information and harming people. "Slandering" means harming the good name and character of others. My opinion is a critical opinion, an expression of a point of view, a value judgment and a judgment of what is true and false. It is not meant to harm any person. Therefore, my opinion has nothing to do with spreading rumours or slander. Criticising is not the same as spreading rumours; even less is opposition the same as slander.
The indictment uses statements from Charter 08 to accuse me of slandering the government and the party and "plotting the subversion and overthrow of the government". This accusation takes quotations out of context and completely ignores the overall tone of Charter 08 and the opinions I have consistently stated in my articles. First, Charter 08 describes the "human rights disasters" in modern China. The anti-rightist campaign led to the unjust designation of more than 500,000 rightists; the Great Leap Forward created the unnatural deaths of over 100,000 people; the Cultural Revolution created a great catastrophe. June 4 was a bloodbath, in which many people died and many were thrown into prison. These events are universally recognised as "human rights disasters" and created dangers for China, "holding back the natural development of the Chinese race and the progress of human civilisation". Ending the monopoly of power and special privileges of a single party is only demanding the ruling party to hand the government back to the people and finally establish a free country, "for the people, by the people and of the people".
The values expressed by Charter 08 and the political reforms it proposes have the long-term objective of a federal state that is free and democratic. There are 19 reform measures, with reforms that are gradual and peaceful. Given that the current reforms have all kinds of shortcomings, we demand that the ruling party walk with two feet instead of one, implementing political as well as economic reform. This is a way for civil society to push the government to give it back power quickly; pressure from below to push the government to enact changes from top down. Therefore, the government and the public can work together in good co-operation and quickly implement the dream of a constitutional government cherished by Chinese for 100 years.
In the 20 years from 1989 to 2009, the opinions, which I have expressed, are about political reforms for China that are consistently gradual, peaceful, orderly and controllable. I have always opposed sudden reform [in favour of] one step [at a time]. Even more, I have opposed violent revolution. This idea of gradual reform is clearly expressed in my article "Changing the Political Power Through Changing Society", that is, by raising the awareness of the rights of civil society to expand the rights of people, increase their sense of their own power, develop civil society so that it can bring pressure from the bottom up and promote the reform of the government from the top down. In reality, the experience of reform in China over the last 30 years proves that the basic force for creative new reforms has come from reforms started by civil society. As the awareness of civil reform and influence expands, so the government is forced to accept new ideas and try them out on an experimental basis. This has changed the pattern of reform policies coming from the top.
To summarise, my key ideas for China's political reform are that they should be gradual, peaceful, orderly and controllable and should be interactive, from above to below and from below to above. This way causes the least cost and leads to the most effective result. I know the basic principles of political change, that orderly and controllable social change is better than one that is chaotic and out of control. The order of a bad government is better than the chaos of anarchy. Therefore, I oppose systems of government that are dictatorships or monopolies. This is not "inciting subversion of state power". Opposition is not equivalent to subversion.
One reason I am not guilty is that the accusations against me contravene internationally recognised human rights standards. In 1948, as a permanent member of the [UN] Security Council, China participated in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Half a century later, in 1998, China made a solemn pledge in front of the international community in signing two UN conventions on human rights. One of these, the International Treaty on Citizens Rights and Political Rights, recognises freedom of speech as a basic universal right and demands that the government of each country respect and protect it. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a member of the UN Human Rights Board, China has an obligation to respect treaties and a responsibility to fulfil its own obligations. It should be a model in implementing the clauses of these treaties that protect human rights. Only in this way can the Chinese government fully safeguard the human rights of its own people. It should make its contribution to promote the cause of international human rights and, in doing so, show the civilized demeanour of a great country.
Coming into the modern era, the Chinese Communist Party went from being weak to strong and finally triumphed over the Kuomintang. It drew its source of strength from its promise "to oppose dictatorship in the name of freedom". Before 1949, the Communist Party's Xinhua Daily and Liberation Daily regularly printed articles attacking the restrictions on free expression by the government of the Jiang family. It made a hue and cry about intellectuals punished for what they said. Mao Zedong and other party leaders often spoke of freedom of expression as a basic right. However, after 1949, from the anti-rightist campaign to the Cultural Revolution, from the execution of Lin Zhao to the cutting of the throat of Zhang Zhixin, the freedom of expression was lost in the Maoist era and the country fell into a deathly silence, like 10,000 horses standing mute. With the start of reform, the ruling party has corrected injustices and greatly increased the liberty for different opinions; the space for free speech by society has widened continuously and the number of writers thrown into prison has greatly decreased. However, the tradition of speech crime has not completely disappeared. From the April 5th movement to June 4th, from Democracy Wall to Charter 08, there have been examples of this. My indictment is only the most recent example.
In the 21st century, freedom of expression has become the common right of people in most countries and sending writers to prison comes when 1,000 people point the finger at someone. From an objective point of view, to block the expression of people is like blocking a river; the high walls of the prison cannot block the expression of freedom. A government cannot suppress the legitimate expression of different opinions and cannot depend on throwing writers into prison as a way to remain in power in the long term. The problems of the pen can only be solved by the use of the pen. As soon as you use the gun to solve the problems of the pen, you will create a disaster of human rights. Only by eliminating the practice of throwing writers into prison can you guarantee that the freedom of speech promised in the constitution will be given to each citizen. Then will the right of freedom of speech be protected in a systematic way and the throwing of writers into prison will be banished for ever from the land of China.
Speech crime is contrary to the principle of human rights set down in China's constitution and laws and is contrary to the UN declaration on International Human Rights. It goes against universal justice and the current of history. I plead innocent for what I have done and hope that I can earn the acceptance of this court. If so, this judgment would set a significant precedent in China's legal history, pass the test of the human rights clauses in China's constitution and international human rights treaties, show the pursuit of justice, and pass the test of history. I thank you all.
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08/01/2022 14:46
