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China dissident gets eight years for subversion ahead of congress
BEIJING |
BEIJING (Reuters) - A court in China has sentenced a man to eight years in prison for trying to form an opposition party and for online messages criticizing the ruling Chinese Communist Party, a week ahead of a congress which will usher in a new generation of leaders.
The court in the southwestern city of Kunming sentenced Cao Haibo, 27, for "subversion of state power", his lawyer, Ma Xiaopeng, said. Cao had called for democracy and had tried to form a party called the "China Republican Party", Ma said.
The charge is more serious than one of incitement of subversion, which is more typically used against party critics.
The sentence signals the party's resolve to crack down hard on dissent, especially as it readies for a power handover at the congress which opens in Beijing on November 8.
President Hu Jintao is due to hand over his party chief position to anointed successor Xi Jinping.
Ma told Reuters by telephone that he thought the sentence was too harsh.
"Cao Haibo does not understand politics in China," Ma said.
"We think he's an immature child; he really did not know that the party would take it this seriously."
Ma said that Cao's party had only existed for one day online.
Cao, who was running an Internet cafe, is not a prominent dissident. Police cited Cao's text messages that he sent to friends using a popular messaging service, Ma said.
Ma said he told the court during the trial in August, which was closed to the public, that Cao did not deserve to be punished criminally.
Ma said he was informed of the sentence, which was delivered on Wednesday, on Thursday morning by telephone, instead of in court. He said that was illegal.
Calls to the Kunming Intermediate Court, which sentenced Cao, were not answered.
Cao's wife, Zhang Yan, confirmed that Cao was jailed for eight years. Zhang, 23, said she was surprised by the severity of the sentence.
"It exceeded our expectations, we only thought he would be sentenced to five years at the most," said Zhang, adding that she did not know the content of Cao's messages that were deemed subversive. They have a nine-month-old child.
Police arrested Cao in October 2011, said Zhang, about three months after she and Cao married. Zhang said she did not know if Cao would appeal but he would meet his lawyer next week.
The party has always moved swiftly to crush opposition t its 63-year monopoly on power. Defendants facing subversion charges in China's party-run courts are almost never acquitted.
(Editing by Ben Blanchard and Robert Birsel)
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If Cao Haibo had been a real dissident, we wouldn’t be hearing about him in the news because there would be no news on him, let alone a trial!
Again, the Chinese Communist government/Party are counting on Westerners to forget that China is a totalitarian Communist state where every aspect of life is monitored by the millions of agents that Beijing utilizes to maintain its TOTAL control of all aspects of life within both the urban and rural populations.
In fact, dissidents that the West hears about, like Cao Haibo or the blind dissident Chen Guangcheng, or the the “artist” Ai Weiwei are manufactured by Beijing, used as voices of “discontent” that will eventually lead to government reforms, where such reforms will take on a life of their own leading to the “collapse” of the Chinese Communist government.
You see, ladies and gentlemen, Communist nations don’t react to events, they create events so they can control those events. Which is exactly what the Chinese Communists will be doing when the fake collapse of the Chinese Communist government takes place shortly…the Communists will control the new “democratic” government because the “political parties” that will sprout up soon in China will be creations of the Chinese Communist government:
“Since at least the early 1970s, the Communist party of China has been poised to create a spectacular but controlled “democratization” at any appropriate time. The party had by then spent two decades consolidating its power, building a network of informants and agents that permeate every aspect of Chinese life, both in the cities and in the countryside. Government control is now so complete that it will not be seriously disturbed by free speech and democratic elections; power can now be exerted through the all-pervasive but largely invisible infrastructure of control. A transition to an apparently new system, using dialectical tactics, is now starting to occur.” — Playing the China Card (The New American, Jan. 1, 1991).
The “collapse” of the Chinese Communist government will be the next major disinformation campaign under the “Long-Range Policy” (the last major disinformation campaign being the “collapse” of the USSR), the “new” strategy all Communist nations signed onto in 1960 as the only workable way to defeat the West. One can learn more about the “Long-Range Policy” by reading KGB defector Major Anatoliy Golitsyn’s 1984 book, “New Lies for Old” (available at Internet Archive), the only Soviet era defector to still be under protective custody in the West (What does that tell you about the “collapse” of the USSR in late 1991?).
In order to understand the World Communist threat to our liberties, one must understand Communist strategy:
“Lenin advised the Communists that they must be prepared to “resort to all sorts of stratagems, maneuvers, illegal methods, evasions and subterfuge” to achieve their objectives. This advice was given on the eve of his reintroduction of limited capitalism in Russia, in his work Left Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder.
… Another speech of Lenin’s … in July 1921 is again highly relevant to understanding “perestroika.” “Our only strategy at present,” wrote Lenin, “is to become stronger and, therefore, wiser, more reasonable, more opportunistic. The more opportunistic, the sooner will you again assemble the masses round you. When we have won over the masses by our reasonable approach, we shall then apply offensive tactics in the strictest sense of the word.”
If you examine the backgrounds of prominent Russian figures, you will find that they have long Communist Party/ KGB or Komsomol pedigrees. Yet for some inexplicable reason, the Western media have accepted their sudden, orchestrated, mass “conversion” to Western-style norms of behavior, their endless talk of “democracy,” and their acceptance of “capitalism,” as genuine. “Scratch these new, instant Soviet “democrats,” “anti-Communists,” and “nationalists” who have sprouted out of nowhere, and underneath will be found secret Party members or KGB agents,” Golitsyn writes on page 123 of his new book [The Perestroika Deception]. In accepting at face value the “transformation” of these Leninist revolutionary Communists into “instant democrats,” the West automatically accepts as genuine the false “Break with the Past” — the single lie upon which the entire deception is based.
In short, the “former” Soviet Union — and the East European countries as well — are all run by people who are steeped in the dialectical modus operandi of Lenin. Without exception, they are all active Leninist revolutionaries, working collectively towards the establishment of a world Communist government, which, by definition, will be a world dictatorship.
It is difficult for the West to understand the Leninist Hegelian dialectical method — the creation of competing or successive opposites in order to achieve an intended outcome. Equally difficult for us to comprehend is the fact that these Leninist revolutionaries plan their strategies over decades and generations. This extraordinary behavior is naturally alien to Western politicians, who can see no further than the next election. Western politicians usually react to events. Leninist revolutionaries create events, in order to control reactions to them and manipulate their outcomes.” — William F Jasper, Senior Editor for The New American magazine.
You ask, what does Jasper mean when he says, “Leninist Hegelian dialectical method — the creation of competing or successive opposites in order to achieve an intended outcome”?
Simply explained, and on a tactical level, it’s called the “Scissors Strategy”, where one blade represents (for example) Putin & Company, however the other blade of the scissors–the leadership of the political “opposition” to Putin & Company–is actually controlled by Putin & Company*, which leaves the genuine opposition in the middle wondering why political change isn’t taking place. Understand this simple strategy?
On a strategic level, back in the 1960s the USSR and China played the “Scissors Strategy”, by pretending to be enemies. This strategy allowed one side to play off against the other with the West, thereby gaining political advantages from the West, which neither Communist giant could have achieved if it was believed they were united. Clever, huh?
Keep Jasper’s and Golitsyn’s wise words in mind.
he and his wife had taken “going to prison” as part of his job.
I had heard about his imprisonment and his ideas before the Nobel Prize was given to him. @DeanKJackson: was Liu’s imprisonment & the history cited by the Nobel Committee also complete fabrication? You’re nuts!
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