Chinese filmmaker gets three and a half years in prison for reporting 'blank sheets' protest
A Shanghai court convicted Chen Pinlin, born in 1991, even though he had signed a plea bargain for a two-year sentence over “Urumqi Middle Road”, a video he made and posted on YouTube in 2023 with eyewitness accounts from people who had suffered from the government’s strict pandemic measures.
Beijing (AsiaNews) – A Chinese documentary filmmaker who had made a feature film on the last major protest movement against the government was sentenced to three years and six months in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, charges often used by the authorities to crack down on press freedom and political activism.
On Monday, a Shanghai court convicted Chen Pinlin, aka "Plato”, who was arrested in November 2023 following the release of “Urumqi Middle Road", a documentary centred on the blank paper” protests, a grassroot movement that developed in late November 2022 to remember the victims of a fire in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang autonomous region, where at least ten people died, trapped in a building due to strict anti-COVID measures imposed during the pandemic.
Quickly, this sparked anger in some of China's major cities, including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing and Xi'an, turning into a general protest movement against the Chinese regime and the largest wave of demonstrations since Tiananmen in 1989.
To evade Communist Party censorship, ordinary people begun to wave simple blank sheets – some time earlier a man named Peng Lifa disappeared after posting a series of banners critical of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The 77-minute documentary "Urumqi Middle Road" was initially released on YouTube and X on the first anniversary of the protests, with footage of protests and several eyewitnesses talking about how they were negatively impacted by the anti-COVID policy.
Born in 1991 Chen Pinlin had until then been involved in advertising videos. This was the first time he expressed political demands.
“This is the first time I've participated in a political event in China,” he wrote on social media. “The more the government misleads, forgets, and censors, the more we must speak up, remind others, and remember,” he added.
After his conviction, his defence lawyer, Daniel Fang, explained on X that before the trial Chen had agreed to a plea bargain with the prosecutor, who in turn had recommended a two-year sentence.
By signing an agreement before the trial, Chen Pinlin implicitly admitted his guilt, waiving his right to defend himself against the main charges, but the court did not consider the prosecutor's recommendations, let alone the plea bargain, the lawyer lamented.
Several Chinese political dissidents living abroad have also pointed out that three and a half years in prison is the heaviest sentence imposed so far in relation to the blank sheet protests.
Fang explained that "Urumqi Middle Road" was created from videos already online at the time, so the accusations of "slander" and "fabrication of false information" directed at Chen are unfounded; he did nothing more than use the slogans expressed by protesters against the Chinese Communist Party and President Xi Jinping.
“In fact, everyone understands why he was held criminally responsible for this case, because someone in the documentary shouted 'Xi Jinping step down’,” said the lawyer, speaking to the Voice of America.
In English, Chen had titled the documentary "Not a foreign power" because at the time of the blank sheet protests, the government blamed them on external elements, while "Urumqi Middle Road" is the name of a street in Shanghai where protesters gathered. A short time after the protests, the street sign also disappeared.
Arbitrary detention is a fate that unites Chinese dissidents and journalists. In 2024 China once again ranks first place as the most repressive country for freedom of the press and expression of dissent.
According to Reporters Without Borders, 124 journalists are currently imprisoned in China, including 11 in Hong Kong. They include journalist Zhang Zhan, who was jailed for four years for covering the pandemic, and was re-arrested after her release in August last year on the same charges as Chen Pinlin: picking quarrels and provoking troubles.
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