In a case that has been condemned by human rights defenders, a Beijing court has upheld the conviction of the veteran Chinese journalist Gao Yu for “leaking state secrets” but released her on medical parole.
The official Xinhua news agency reported that the People’s Third Intermediate Court in Beijing had granted the parole based on a medical report that said Ms Gao (71), who won the Unesco/ Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 1997, suffered from “serious disease”.
Earlier, Ms Gao’s sentence was reduced by two years to five years after an appeal. Xinhua reported that Ms Gao had her sentence reduced because she admitted her guilt and testified against herself at the appeal.
Her lawyer Shang Baojun said on social media that Ms Gao had testified against herself as she "did not want to die in prison".
Ms Gao has been held since April 2014. She has written strident articles criticising the government and was convicted in April of leaking a 2013 directive by the Communist party named “Document number 9” to a Hong Kong media outlet.
The document warned senior Communist Party members against "seven mistaken ideologies", including the "universal values" of human rights and western democracy.
The presidency of Xi Jinping has witnessed a widescale crackdown on dissent that has seen hundreds of lawyers, activists and academics detained, with dozens jailed.
Before her initial conviction in April she made a public confession on TV – an increasingly common phenomenon, one which she subsequently withdrew, saying she had been coerced after authorities threatened her son, who had been taken into custody and later released.
This is the third time Ms Gao has been jailed on charges stemming from her activism and for leaking state secrets.
She started her career at the government news agency China News Service, eventually becoming deputy editor of Economics Weekly, which was closed for its reporting of the pro-democracy movement in 1989.
She was jailed for supporting the protests from June 1989 to August 1990, and again from 1993 to 1999, on similar charges of “illegally providing state secrets to foreigners”.
The veteran reporter has suffered heart problems during her detention, and her lawyer suggested that there was a chance she could be released on medical parole.
The France-based Reporters Without Borders ranked China 176th out of
180 countries in its 2015 Press Freedom Index.
Benjamin Ismaïl, the head of the Reporters Without Borders Asia-Pacific desk, condemned how foreign embassy representatives were turned away from the closed-door court session.
“We reiterate our call for the release of Gao Yu, who did none of the things she is alleged to have done. Her state of health, which continues to be worrying, constitutes an additional reason for her immediate release,” said Ismaïl.
