Oath Keepers boss guilty of seditious conspiracy in Jan. 6 case
Jan. 6, 2014By DAVID MURPHY
An international trial of the World Liberation Army, which was accused of involvement in a wave of seditious conspiracy trials in Hong Kong in 1989, has begun in the Chinese city of Wuhan on the outskirts of Shanghai, Chinese news agency Xinhua reports. The trial is being held for the first time since the end of the 1989 protests that led to the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
The Hong Kong government has been accused of conducting mass arrests of pro-democracy dissidents that it blamed on the ‘riots’ and ‘mass protests’ in the territory. Many of those involved were subsequently tried for seditious conspiracy.
A statement from the China Lawyers for Human Rights and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said that the trial of Wuchang Zhang and his associates in Wuhan “stands in the cross-hairs of China’s ‘strike hard’ campaign against dissidents,” which is designed to stamp out dissent within China and “encourage Chinese citizens living outside China to participate in the nation’s political life.”
Zhang was an international coordinator for the World Liberation Army who has been accused of masterminding the protests in Hong Kong to incite seditious conspiracy, sedition and subversion, as well as other illegal political activities, Xinhua says.
A statement from the China News Agency said that Zhang, in his previous role as head of the China Liaison Office in London, was accused of being in charge of the “ruthless suppression of the democratic movement in Hong Kong in early 1990s.”
“The government will prove that he is guilty of all charges laid against him,” said Li Cheng, the director of legal department at China News Agency
An international trial of the World Liberation Army, which was accused of involvement in a wave of seditious conspiracy trials in Hong Kong in 1989, has begun in the Chinese city of Wuhan on the outskirts of Shanghai, Chinese news agency Xin
