BEIJING: Filmmaker Shen Yongping, who made a documentary on China’s constitutional governance, will stand trial on charges of ‘illegal business activity’, raising questions about Beijing’s promise to uphold the rule of law in accordance with the constitution. Yongping will be the first person prosecuted for documenting China’s constitutional history in a film titled 100 years of constitutional governance, said his lawyer Zhang Xuezhong.
The trial comes at a time of increased optimism among some Chinese scholars about Beijing’s willingness to enforce the supervision of China’s Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression. But Shen’s detention and other arrests have eroded that.
Chinese intellectuals and international rights groups have denounced President Xi Jinping’s administration for the worst suppression of human rights in years. The film is about “the Chinese people’s pursuit of constitutionalism from the time of the Qing dynasty till the present day, and their failed experiences,” Zhang said, adding that he will argue that the eight-episode documentary is not illegal.
The 33-year-old Shen has been held at Beijing’s Chaoyang District Detention Centre since late April, Zhang said. Police had warned Shen during filming that if he persisted in making the documentary, he would “definitely go to prison.” Police in Beijing were not immediately available for comment.
Shen will be tried on November 4 in a court in Beijing. If convicted of engaging in ‘illegal business activity’, he could be sentenced to five years or more in prison. The documentary “does not constitute a crime” because Shen never engaged in any business or made any profit from his film, Zhang said, adding that Shen will plead not guilty. “This accusation is extremely absurd. ‘Illegal business activity’ has now become another tactic for them to conduct their political suppression,” he commented.
Shen had raised over $16,354 to make this documentary from individual supporters on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, and had intended to make the documentary for them, Zhang said. The film was released on Weibo sometime around April or May. He also made 1,000 DVD sets, but they had been confiscated by the police.
The filmmaker previously wrote a book on the nationalists’ cooperation and subsequent struggles with the Communist Party. The nationalists, known as the Kuomintang party, retreated to Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war in 1949.
On October 23, China’s Communist Party said it would improve the supervision of the constitution under the National People’s Congress, the country’s parliament. On Monday, the official Xinhua news agency said December 4 will be designated National Constitution Day, which is supposed to remind people that “no organisation or individual shall have the privilege of being placed above the constitution.”
But international rights groups said these claims ring hollow, given the recent crackdown on freedom of expression. “The arrest of Shen is a signal from the government,” said Maya Wang from the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch. “Through these arrests, the government is making clear that the ‘rule of law’ should be understood as an instrument for the state to maintain its monopoly of power, not as a force to rein in arbitrary state power.” Last week, police in Beijing charged Tie Liu, an 81-year-old writer, with ‘illegal business activity’ after he criticised China’s former and present leaders in essays.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 28th, 2014.
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