On Monday, November 23, 2009, Huang Qui was sentenced to three years in prison for “illegal possession of state secrets” by the Chengdu Wuhou District Court, Sichuan Province, after being tried in a three-hour secret trial in August, 2008. Huang has been in detention since June, 2008. According to his wife, Zeng Li, his health has seriously deteriorated and he has been diagnosed with an abdominal aneurysm.
Huang, who ran the Tianwang or Sky Net Human Rights Center in Chengdu, had used his Web site to make an appeal on behalf of five family members whose children died in a collapsed middle school in the May 2008 earthquake. He called for an investigation into shoddy construction practices that may have left the school vulnerable and he asked that officials responsible for the collapse be punished. His lawyer, Mo Shaoping, called the charge of possessing state secrets “fabricated” because the documents cited in the case were rules for government agencies for handling petitions by citizens that had been published in newspapers and on the Internet.
We urged the Chinese authorities immediately to release Qui on medical parole and to drop all charges against Huang Qui, in accordance with Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory, which states that all persons shall be entitled to due process in criminal trials, and Article 10, which requires that prisoners be treated with humanity.