China prepares to gag free speech champion Pu Zhiqiang; Guardian, 12/11/15

Tom Phillips, Guardian; China prepares to gag free speech champion Pu Zhiqiang:

"Perry Link, an American academic whose wife stood alongside Pu during the 1989 democracy protests, said Chinese leaders were determined to silence a man who had become an expert in “punching the Communist party in the nose in indiscreet ways”. “He has irritated people at the top and they have decided they need to stop him,” said Link, a veteran China expert from the University of California, Riverside.

Pu’s lawyers say he will face two separate charges at Monday’s trial – “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and “inciting ethnic hatred” – and faces up to eight years in jail. Both accusations relate to seven tweets he allegedly posted on Weibo, China’s Twitter, between 2011 and 2014, the year he was detained...

Others fear Beijing will impose a harsh punishment in order to intimidate and silence Pu’s many thousands of supporters. “He is an advocate of free speech – that’s exactly his issue,” said Link. “And if all of these followers can see that our hero of free speech can be put away for exactly the crime of exercising his free speech that is a terrible blow, to internet expression especially.”

“If he gets put away for a longish term it will have a huge chilling effect on the internet in China and that is serious.”"