BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese appeals court Friday threw out a fraud conviction against a rights activist who has fought on behalf of people forcibly evicted from their homes, but it upheld a separate conviction against Ni Yulan for causing a disturbance, her lawyers said.
A lower court had ruled that Ni and her husband Dong Jiqin acted in an unruly way when they failed to pay for their stay at a hotel — where they had been detained by police — and mistreated staff. It also ruled Ni had received money through deceit.
Defense lawyer Cheng Hai said the higher court — Beijing First Intermediate Court — rescinded the fraud conviction and cut Ni’s prison sentence by two months to two years and six months after the person who gave Ni the money told the court it was a donation.
“We consider it a success,” said Dong Qianyong, another lawyer for Ni.
Public disturbance convictions against the couple remain, and Dong Jiqin’s two-year sentence handed down by the lower court stands, Cheng said.
Cheng said he plans to appeal again for Ni’s release.
Ni is not as well-known internationally as some Chinese dissidents, but she has been the target of “sustained police persecution” for the past decade, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a Hong Kong-based organization.
She has been jailed twice before — first in 2002 and again in 2008 for “obstructing official business.”
Ni and her supporters say she is being punished for her years of activism, especially her advocacy for people forced from their homes to make way for the fast-paced real estate development that remade Beijing for the 2008 Olympics.
In early 2011, then-U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman visited Ni to show support for her. After her earlier sentencing this year, current U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke urged Beijing to release her, and the State Department said her case was raised during the annual U.S.-China human rights dialogue that ended in Washington on Tuesday.
