On August 8th, Chinese democracy advocate and online writer Xu Lin was sentenced to 3 years and 9 months in prison at the Nansha Court in Guangzhou, without a public hearing.
Mrs. Wang, Xu Lin’s wife, expressed to the media that the court proceedings were conducted in secrecy and lasted only 10 minutes. Only she and Xu Lin’s sister were allowed in the courtroom, while friends and other family members were either blocked from entering or stopped at home.
Up to this point, the family has not seen the indictment and has hired a lawyer to meet with Xu Lin next week. Mrs. Wang stated, “We don’t know what crime Xu Lin has committed. Just based on a few words from you, we are supposed to believe it and decide his guilt? This is truly shameful.”
Mrs. Wang believes that the 3 years and 9 months sentence is too harsh. Xu Lin’s father, who is elderly, is worried about whether he will be able to hold on until his son can come back to see him.
Xu Lin was detained by the Nansha District Sub-bureau of Guangzhou Public Security Bureau on May 17, 2024, on suspicion of “provoking trouble” and later arrested after one month, being held at the Nansha Detention Center in Guangzhou.
During his detention, Xu Lin’s health deteriorated rapidly. On July 22, his family received a letter from Xu Lin stating new health issues and requesting to see a lawyer as soon as possible. Attorney Ge Wenxiu visited Xu Lin at the Nansha Detention Center on the afternoon of July 30 and later made the conversation record public.
In the meeting, Xu Lin mentioned that he had been rapidly losing weight for six months, becoming extremely thin. He was severely lacking potassium and calcium. At his request, the detention center only started giving him 2 bananas a day, and after some improvement, his weight only recovered to 46.6 kilograms. Xu Lin strongly protested against the delayed judgment by judicial authorities, intentionally torturing him, and demanded a prompt verdict to leave the detention center.
At the end of the meeting, Xu Lin stated that if there was no prompt judgment, he would protest through hunger strikes and banging his head against the wall. Prior to his arrest on May 16, 2024, he released a statement on a platform, declaring that if he died in prison, regardless of the cause, it would be due to persecution by the Chinese Communist Party.
Since the late 1990s, Xu Lin has been penning articles and poems criticizing social issues and creating numerous songs advocating for universal values such as freedom and democracy. As a result, he has been summoned and warned by the police multiple times. Starting in 2010, he actively engaged in street protests, speeches, and organizing citizen assemblies in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other places.
Xu Lin was first arrested on September 26, 2017, after his song “Revealing the Truth” featured video footage of the infamous police killing of Xu Chunhe in Qing’an, Heilongjiang province. He was charged with “provoking trouble” and sentenced to 3 years in prison. Prior to his arrest, the police took him from his home in Hunan to Guangzhou, where they seized a large number of his personal belongings on the grounds of incitement.