- Introduction
- I. Risks and Rights
- II. Outside the Arena
- III. Security, Surveillance, and Safety
- IV. Protecting Your Chinese Contacts
- V. The Great Firewall
- VI. Practical Information
- Map of China with 2008 Olympic Sites
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- Download PDF / Japanese
- Download PDF / Spanish
Defining the Crimes
Legal tools used to silence Chinese critics
Chinese journalists wishing to report on human rights violations in China face great risks. As the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China has noted: “Prosecuting individuals for national security violations, in particular subversion, is currently the most common method used by Chinese authorities for silencing those who, in spite of the legal, political, psychological, and technological barriers that authorities have erected to prevent Chinese citizens from expressing their opinions, nevertheless attempt to exercise their right to publish their political views.”
Chinese authorities rely in particular on two articles of China’s Criminal Code to detain and imprison journalists and activists on national security grounds: Article 105, concerning the subversion of state power, and Article 111, which deals with the divulgation of state secrets.
- Article 105(2), on instigating the “subversion of state power”:
“Whoever instigates the subversion of the political power of the state and acts to overthrow the socialist system through spreading rumors, slandering, or other ways are to be sentenced to not more than five years of fixed-term imprisonment, criminal detention, control, or deprivation of political rights; the ringleaders and those whose crimes are grave are to be sentenced to not less than five years of fixed-term imprisonment.”
- Article 111, on the divulgation of “state secrets or intelligence” to a foreign organization:
“Whoever steals, secretly gathers, purchases, or illegally provides state secrets or intelligence for an organization, institution, or personnel outside the country is to be sentenced from not less than five years to not more than 10 years of fixed-term imprisonment; when circumstances are particularly serious, he is to be sentenced to not less than 10 years of fixed-term imprisonment, or life sentence; and when circumstances are relatively minor, he is to be sentenced to not more than five years of fixed-term imprisonment, criminal detention, control, or deprivation of political rights.”
Source: http://www.com-law.net/findlaw/crime/criminallaw2.html
