HONG KONG — A court in southern China has sentenced three prominent labor organizers to suspended prison terms, human rights groups and a lawyer for one of them said on Monday, more than nine months after they were arrested amid a crackdown on civic organizations that work outside the Communist Party.
The activists, who live in the southern province of Guangdong, could still be imprisoned if found guilty of any further offenses, the lawyer, Lai Shengqi, said by telephone.
Mr. Lai’s client, Zeng Feiyang, was charged with “gathering a crowd to disturb social order” and sentenced to three years with a four-year suspension. The two other organizers, Tang Jian and Zhu Xiaomei, were sentenced to one and a half years in prison with two-year suspensions, said William Nee, a China researcher in Hong Kong for Amnesty International.
The sentences for Ms. Zhu and Mr. Tang, while relatively mild, were surprising, said Mr. Nee, because the two had already been released on bail, and judging by past practice in China, it was not expected that they would be tried at all.
But the three activists, in addition to at least one other still in custody, had proved extremely effective at organizing workers to win higher pay and better conditions. While their activities had been generally tolerated for many years, as the Chinese economy boomed and labor shortages grew, the government appears to be taking a harsher line on such activities now that growth has slowed and some factories are relocating to countries like Vietnam, where labor can be cheaper.
Mr. Zeng, the director of the Panyu Migrant Workers Center in Guangzhou, was particularly adept at adopting the language of the labor rights movement to match some of the most important goals of the Communist Party, such as preserving stability, Mr. Nee said.
“Things were never perfect — there was a labor crackdown in 2012 — but over all, there was a positive direction,” Mr. Nee said by telephone.
Last year, however, the Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin recorded more than 2,700 protests and strikes in China, more than double the number in 2014. In December, Mr. Zeng, Ms. Zhu, who was nursing a baby, and several other activists were detained.
Although the crackdown appeared to be confined to Guangdong, Mr. Zeng was the subject of intense criticism by the nation’s official media, which sought to cast doubt on his character in, among other reports, a 24-minute television segment on Dec. 23 that accused him of deliberately inciting unrest and taking money from foreign sources. Xinhua, the official news agency, reported on Dec. 22 that Mr. Zeng, a married man, had had at least eight extramarital affairs.
Pang Kun, a former lawyer for Ms. Zhu, expressed some relief after the suspended sentences were announced because they meant that the activists would not be immediately imprisoned. But, he said, the sentences were “unacceptable” because what Ms. Zhu did — organize and help workers — “was not a crime.”
The suspended sentences will also mean that the activists will find it difficult to continue their work, Mr. Pang said by telephone from Shenzhen. No one answered the phone at the Panyu District Court in Guangzhou, where the sentences were announced.
“It’s obvious that the authorities want them to depend on the government and the system to deal with similar labor disputes,” Mr. Pang said. www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/world/asia/china-labor-activists-guangdong-sentenced.html?_r=0
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