Beijing Municipal People’s Procuratorate Branch No. 1 -- Indictment

December 10, 2009

Criminal Indictment (2009) No. 247

Beijing Municipal People’s Procuratorate Branch No. 1

Defendant Liu Xiaobo: male; born December 28, 1955; identification number 210203195512285575; PhD education; Han ethnicity; unemployed; registered residence: 2-1-2 No. 5 Qingchun Street, Xigang District, Dalian, Liaoning Province; residing at No. 502, Unit 1, Building 10, Bank of China Dormitory, Qixian Village, Haidian District, Beijing.

In January 1991, Liu was found guilty of charges of counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement but was exempted from criminal punishment; in September 1996, he was ordered to serve three years of Reeducation-Through-Labor on charges of disturbing social order. On December 9, 2008, he was placed under residential surveillance on suspicion of inciting subversion of state power by the Beijing Public Security Bureau, and, after approval by this procuratorate, was formally arrested by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau on June 23, 2009.

The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau has concluded its investigation of this case, and on December 1, 2009, transferred his case based on the suspicion that defendant Liu Xiaobo is guilty of inciting subversion of state power, to this procuratorate for examination and review in order to indict him. After this procuratorate received this case, it notified the defendant of his right to retain defense counsel on December 3, 2009, interrogated the defendant according to law, and examined all the case material.

The examination conducted according to law has found that:

Since 2005, the defendant Liu Xiaobo, due to his dissatisfaction with the state power and socialist system of our country’s people’s democratic dictatorship, has published inciting articles, including “The CPC’s Dictatorial Patriotism,” “Can It Be that the Chinese People Deserve Only ‘Party-Led Democracy’?,” “Changing the Regime by Changing Society,” “The Many Aspects of CPC Dictatorship,” “The Negative Effects of the Rise of Dictatorship on World Democratization,” and “Further Questions about Child Slavery in China’s Kilns,” on foreign websites, such as Observe China and the Chinese edition of the BBC. The rumors and slanders in the articles include: “since the Communist Party of China took power, generations of CPC dictators have cared most about their own power and least about human life”; “all dictatorships like to proclaim patriotism but dictatorial patriotism is really just an excuse to inflict disasters on the country and calamities on its people. The official patriotism advocated by the CPC dictatorship is an institutional fallacy of ‘substituting the party for the country’; the essence of this patriotism is to demand that the people love the dictatorial regime, the one-party rule, and the dictators; it usurps patriotism in order to inflict disasters on the nation and calamities on the people”; and “all of the tricks used by the CPC are stop-gap measures for the dictators to preserve the last phase of their power and will not be able to support for long this dictatorial edifice that is already showing countless cracks.” He also incites as follows: “changing the regime by changing society”; “for the emergence of a free China, placing hope in ‘new policies’ of those in power is far worse than placing hope in the continuous expansion of the ‘new power’ among the people.”

Between September and December 2008, the defendant Liu Xiaobo, in collusion with others, drafted and concocted Charter 08, falsely accusing and slandering that “of all the great nations of the world today, China alone still clings to an authoritarian way of life and has, as a result, created an unbroken chain of human rights disasters and social crises, held back the development of the Chinese people, and hindered the progress of human civilization,” and putting forward various positions, such as “abolish one-party monopolization of ruling privileges,” “establish China’s federal republic under the framework of constitutional democracy,” in an attempt to incite subversion of the current regime. After collecting over 300 signatures, Liu Xiaobo distributed Charter 08 with the signatures via e-mail to overseas websites and posted it on overseas websites, such as the websites of Democratic China [minzhuzhongguo.org] and the Independent Chinese PEN Center [chinesepen.org].

After committing the crime, the defendant Liu Xiaobo was found and brought to justice.

The aforementioned facts are proven by the following evidence:

The defendant’s confession and defense argument, witnesses’ testimonies, records of the on scene investigation and examination, written opinions on the judicial evaluation of digital data, documentary evidence, and the detention procedure report, etc.

This procuratorate believes that defendant Liu Xiaobo disregarded state laws and by means of rumor-mongering, slander, etc. incited subversion of state power and the overthrow of the socialist system, which is a major offense. His actions violated the stipulations of Article 105 (2) of the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China. Furthermore, the facts of the crime are clear, the evidence is reliable and abundant, and he should be found criminally responsible for the crime of inciting subversion of state power. This procuratorate is instituting prosecution proceedings on the basis of the provisions of Article 141 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China, and asks for a judgment and punishment according to law.

Submitted to

Beijing Municipal No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court

Prosecutor: Zhang Rongge
Deputy Prosecutor: Pan Xueqing
Beijing Municipal People’s Procuratorate, Branch No. 1

December 10, 2009

Additional Notes:

1. Defendant Liu Xiaobo is being detained at the Beijing No. 1 Detention Center;
2. Along with the case, we are sending one copy of the catalogue of evidence and the list of witnesses, as well as three photocopied volumes of the main evidence;
3. Along with the case, we are sending one copy of the list of seized items as exhibits.Translation by HRIC.