Rights group: China sentences 2 lawyers on ‘farcical’ charge

BEIJING (AP) — A human rights group says two prominent Chinese human rights lawyers have been sentenced to more than a decade in prison. It’s part of an ongoing crackdown by the ruling Communist Party on its critics. Human Rights Watch said Monday that Xu Zhiyong was sentenced to 14 years and Ding Jiaxi to 12 years for “subversion of state power.” Such proceedings are conducted under intense secrecy and the court did not immediately respond to requests for confirmation. In 2015, President Xi Jinping ordered the arrests of around 200 lawyers and legal activists. Both Xu and Ding had served multiple years in prison for their dissident stances on the country’s authoritarian system. A senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch called the convictions “cruelly farcical.”