By Alkan Akad in Amnesty International. Here is an extract:

“The disgraceful sentencing of prominent Chinese human rights defenders Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi is a blatant violation of their rights to freedom of expression and assembly. They should be released immediately and unconditionally.

“No one should be jailed simply for attending a peaceful meeting. Having faced torture and other ill-treatment during years of arbitrary detention, Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi now face more than a decade behind bars after rigged and secretive trials.

“These sentences lay bare the increasingly dire situation for human rights defenders across China under President Xi Jinping’s administration, where trying to improve the lives of others through legitimate human rights work is met with arrests, torture and lengthy jail sentences.”

Read the full article here.