Ding Jiaxi (left) and Xu Zhiyong
By Jerome A. Cohen
After torturing these two admirable people for almost two years, the PRC finally appears ready to bring them to secret trial, probably between Christmas and the New Year in order to minimize foreign publicity. Here is a reliable two-page summary of their plight written by Lawyer Ding’s remarkable wife, Sophie Luo, who is now working in the United States for a European company while devoting all other energy to attempting to secure her husband’s freedom. She is not only as well-informed as possible about this non-transparent prosecution but also unusually articulate, thoughtful and balanced in her analysis of the overall PRC human rights situation. A Council on Foreign Relations Round Table Dialogue with her is tentatively scheduled for December 14.
One of the questions worthy of exploration is why the PRC bothers with secret and distorted legal trappings in many cases like this while using even less transparent methods to silence other reformers and critics. What purposes are served by the Chinese Communist Party’s criminal justice charades? How much has Xi Jinping learned from Stalin and how much has he “improved on” Stalin’s widely-condemned techniques?