Xi critic imprisoned on corruption charges
BEIJING — The former chairman of a state-owned real estate company who publicly criticized President Xi Jinping’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Tuesday on corruption charges, a court announced.
Ren Zhiqiang, who became known for speaking up about censorship and other sensitive topics, disappeared from public view in March after publishing an essay online that accused Xi of mishandling the outbreak that began in December in the central city of Wuhan.
Ren, 69, was convicted of corruption, bribery, embezzlement of public funds and abuse of power, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court announced on its social media account. It cited Ren as saying he wouldn’t appeal.
In a commentary that circulated on social media, Ren criticized a Feb. 23 video conference with 170,000 officials held early in the pandemic at which Xi announced orders for responding to the disease.
Ren didn’t mention Xi’s name but said, “standing there was not an emperor showing off his new clothes but a clown who had stripped off his clothes and insisted on being an emperor.”
Ren criticized propaganda that portrayed Xi and other leaders as rescuing China from the disease without mentioning where it began and possible mistakes including suppressing information at the start of the outbreak.
Tuesday. More than half a million laborers went through the program in the first seven months of this year, according to the report, written by Adrian Zenz, a leading researcher into China’s Xinjiang policies.
“The labor transfer policy mandates that pastoralists and farmers are to be subjected to centralized ‘military-style’ vocational training, which aims to reform ‘backward thinking’ and includes training in ‘work discipline,’ law, and the Chinese language,” Zenz said. Training photos from Tibet’s Chamdo region described in the report suggested that the sessions were being supervised by the People’s Armed Police.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement to Reuters that forced labor “simply does not exist” in the country, adding that workers participated voluntarily and were properly compensated. “We hope the international community will distinguish right from wrong, respect facts, and not be fooled by lies,” the ministry said. medical advances, the advent of “do not resuscitate” orders and legal approval for assisted suicide, as well as new Vatican perspectives on palliative care, including for children.
The Vatican stressed in the new document that the renunciation of extraordinary care in no way can mean a request for assisted suicide or euthanasia, which it called “a crime against human life.”
“The judgment that an illness is incurable cannot mean that care has come at an end,” it said. “Euthanasia, therefore, is an intrinsically evil act, in every situation or circumstance.”
It said those who participate in it, including medical personnel, are committing “homicide” and that lawmakers who approve it “become accomplices of a grave sin.”