Hong Kong
CNN
—
A Chinese filmmaker was to go on trial Monday for his documentary about nationwide protests in China against Covid-related lockdowns in late 2022, as Beijing seeks to erase public memory of astonishing scenes of dissent against its handling of the pandemic.
Chen Pinlin was scheduled to appear in a Shanghai court on Monday afternoon for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” according to a photo of the hearing notice released by the Shanghai Baoshan People’s Court. A person familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN the authenticity of the notice.
This vaguely worded accusation is commonly used by the Chinese government to silence dissent and target activists, lawyers and journalists. It carries a maximum prison sentence of five years for first-time offenders.
Chen, nicknamed “Plato”, was arrested by Shanghai police in January 2024 after broadcasting a documentary to mark the first anniversary of what became known as the “White Paper” protests.
The protests marked the largest wave of public dissent China has seen in decades and posed an unprecedented challenge to leader Xi Jinping.
The protests were sparked by a deadly apartment fire in the western city of Urumqi in November 2022. Many believed pandemic-related lockdown measures had hampered relief efforts, despite official denials. The tragedy triggered deep public anger that was boiling after nearly three years of continued lockdowns, mass testing and financial hardship.
Protests erupted across the country, on a scale not seen since the Tiananmen student movement in 1989. On university campuses and on the streets of major cities, crowds gathered to call for an end to the zero policy. Xi’s Covid, with some denouncing censorship and demanding greater political freedoms.
Some held up blank sheets of A4 paper – a metaphor for the countless critical messages and press articles that had been suppressed by censorship – and this is why the demonstrations became known in some circles as the “protests” White Paper.”
In Shanghai, protesters even demanded Xi’s resignation – an unimaginable act of political defiance against the country’s most powerful and authoritarian leader in decades.
The protests eventually stopped amid a broad security crackdown by the authorities. Shortly afterward, the Chinese government removed Covid-related restrictions in an abrupt about-face, although it did not directly acknowledge the protests in any public statement.
Chen’s documentary was released on YouTube and X, which are blocked in China. His accounts on both platforms have since been deleted.
In Chinese, the documentary is called “Urumqi Middle Road,” a nod to the street where protesters gathered in Shanghai to express their anger over the burning of the city of the same name.
In English it was called “Not the Foreign Force”. Chen previously said he wanted to use the documentary to counter the government’s attempt to discredit the protests and blame “foreign forces” for orchestrating the dissent – a tactic often deployed by China’s ruling Communist Party to explain the moments of real public anger.
Like many young people who participated in the protests, it was Chen’s first time expressing his political demands in China when he took to the streets of Shanghai on November 26, 2022, according to an article he published during the release of the documentary.
He said he produced the documentary for to transmit his personal experience and reflections.
“I hope to understand why whenever internal conflicts break out in China, foreign forces are always scapegoated. The answer is clear to everyone: the more the government misleads, forgets and censors, the more we must speak out, remind others and remember,” he wrote. “Only by remembering the ugliness can we tend toward the light. I also hope that one day China will embrace its own light and its own future. »
International rights groups have called for Chen’s release since his arrest.
Chen “only ever served the public interest by reporting on historic protests against regime abuses and should never have been arrested.” We call on democracies to increase pressure on Chinese authorities so that all charges against Chen are dropped,” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in a statement in March.
China’s opaque justice system, which answers to the Communist Party, already boasts a conviction rate above 99%. Trials regularly take place behind closed doors. China is at the bottom of RSF’s annual press freedom rankings, in 172nd place out of 180.