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On July 30, 2025, the Changsha Intermediate Court in [China's] Hunan Province tried human rights lawyer Xie Yang behind closed doors on charges of “inciting subversion of state power.” Those charges stem from Xie Yang’s remarks online and to foreign journalists about political and legal affairs, and human rights violations, in China. Authorities convened the trial after Xie Yang had been held in pre-trial detention for over three and a half years, during which he alleged he was repeatedly tortured.
“Xie Yang did nothing other than exercise his rights to free speech as guaranteed by China’s Constitution and international law,” said Sophie Richardson, Co-Executive Director of the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders. “Chinese authorities compounded his wrongful detention by holding him in excessive pretrial detention, ignoring his allegations of torture, and denying him the right to a fair trial.”
The July 30 hearing was marred by numerous legal violations, including authorities failing to notify one of Xie Yang’s lawyers of the hearing, and opening the trial despite denying Xie and his other lawyer access to copy case files during the pre-trial meeting on July 28 that would be used as evidence. Authorities classified all 18 case files as confidential despite eight not bearing a “secret” classification marking. To protest these violations of his fair trial rights, Xie dismissed his lawyer, Li Guobei at the July 30 hearing. The trial has not yet concluded.
Xie Yang is a human rights lawyer who represented many human rights defenders before facing government retaliation for his work. He was detained and tortured during the government’s “709” Crackdown on human rights lawyers in 2015, an unprecedented assault on human rights lawyers and rule of law activists, and then stripped of his law license in 2020.
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