Detained Chinese human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang faces trial News
Lei_Fang / Pixabay
Detained Chinese human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang faces trial

The closed trial of detained human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang began Wednesday in Tianjin amid protests.

Wang and approximately 300 other lawyers and legal activists were arrested during the 709 Crackdown on July 9, 2015. Though most of the detainees were eventually released, Wang has not been seen in three years, despite international pressure to release him and other detained human rights activists.

Amnesty International called the trial a “sham” and a “cruel charade.” Wang’s charges include “seriously harm[ing] the country’s security and social stability” and “maliciously inciting” opposition to the Chinese government and could carry a penalty of life imprisonment. The trial ended on Wednesday with no verdict announced. 

Wang’s wife Li Wenzu has faced surveillance and harassment from Chinese authorities and was barred from attending her husband’s trial along with representatives from the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Switzerland who tried to gain entry.

 

THIS DAY @ LAW

President Johnson signed law against burning draft cards

On August 31, 1965, President Johnson signed a law making the burning of draft cards a federal offense subject to a five-year prison sentence and $1000 fine. In response to the law and in protest of the war in Vietnam, the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam staged the first public burning of a draft card in the United States on October 15, 1965. The constitutionality of the federal law was upheld in 1968 by the US Supreme Court in US v. O'Brien.

Gdansk Agreement reached

On August 31, 1980, the communist government of Poland and labor leaders settled the Gdansk Agreement. The accord settled a summer of labor strikes at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland. With the Agreement, Poland became the first communist country to allow the creation of an independent labor union, which was called Solidarity. Solidarity then became the driving force that ended communism in Poland. Learn more about the history of Solidarity.