Following is legal activist Xu Zhiyong’s closing statement at the end of his trial in Beijing
on January 22, 2014. According to his lawyer, Xu was only able to read “about ten minutes of it before the presiding judge stopped him, saying it was irrelevant to the case.” On January 26, Xu was sentenced to four years in prison for “gathering a crowd to disturb public order,” a charge stemming from his involvement in the grassroots New Citizens Movement, which sought to expose social injustice and official corruption. The translation is by Yaxue Cao and the team at China Change, where it first appeared. The hyperlinks are ours. The Editors
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