Veteran Chinese scribe Gao Yu sentenced to 7 years for leaking Communist Party papers

Beijing: A court in Beijing on Friday sentenced veteran Chinese journalist Gao Yu to seven years in prison for leaking a top Communist Party document that outlined the leadership’s resolve to aggressively curb civil society and press freedom. The sentence comes amid a widening clampdown on free speech that highlights the gap between China’s vision of rule of law and Western notions of social freedoms and judicial fairness. [caption id=“attachment_2200306” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “]  Chinese journalist Gao Yu. AP/File image[/caption] Gao, 71, had denied the charges. Gao’s lawyer Mo Shaoping said Gao was convicted of leaking state secrets by giving a strategy paper known as Document No. 9 to an overseas media group. The document argued for aggressive curbs on the spread of Western democracy, universal values, civil society and press freedom, which the party considers a threat to its rule. Police patrolled the perimeter of Beijing’s No. 3 Intermediate Court where the verdict was delivered and Gao could not be reached for comment. Her brother, Gao Wei, said he was present inside the court, but was escorted away by police and was unable to talk to media. The verdict appeared to authenticate the existence of the leaked document, which had been published in 2013 in a Hong Kong magazine but had never been openly discussed by the ruling Communist Party. It verifies widely held assumptions about President Xi Jinping’s distrust of any social organization outside party control, recently manifested in the more-than month-long detentions of five women’s rights activists detained after planning to start a public awareness campaign about sexual harassment. Gao, who wrote about politics, economics and social issues for media in Hong Kong and overseas, served time in prison on state secrets charges more than two decades ago. Associated Press