China COVID protest filmmaker sentenced to prison, former lawyer says

Tue, January 7, 2025 
By Laurie Chen

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese director who made a film about the 2022 "white paper" demonstrations against China's COVID restrictions was sentenced to three and a half years in prison by a Shanghai court this week, his former lawyer said.

In the protests, people held up blank, white sheets of paper as a symbol of defiance against government efforts to censor criticism of the zero-COVID policy.

The nationwide protests were the largest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations and unprecedented since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.

A judge sentenced Chen Pinlin, 33, to jail for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" in a closed-door trial on Monday, Daniel Fang, who handled Chen's case before leaving China last year, told Reuters. He cited people familiar with the case.
Chen, who had pleaded guilty, plans to appeal against the sentence, Fang cited the people as saying.

The Shanghai Baoshan District People's Court did not respond to a request seeking comment.

"Picking quarrels and provoking trouble" is a charge commonly used by the Chinese government against dissidents and human rights activists. It carries a maximum prison term of five years.

"Documentary filmmaker Chen Pinlin was only serving the public interest by documenting an historic episode of protest against censorship," said Aleksandra Bielakowska, advocacy managers at Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

"We call on the international community to increase pressure on the regime to secure the release of Chen Pinlin, along with the 123 other journalists and press freedom defenders currently detained in the country."

FILM

Chen's 77-minute film, titled "Urumqi Road", was uploaded to YouTube in late 2023 under his pseudonym "Plato".

It consists of footage filmed by Chen in Shanghai as well as video clips posted by internet users which were quickly scrubbed from Chinese social media.

He was detained by Shanghai police in late November 2023 and formally arrested in January last year, according to Amnesty International.

While the protests were quickly suppressed by police, they helped hasten the end of three years of some of the world's strictest pandemic curbs.

Throughout the pandemic China had said its strict COVID measures were necessary to save lives and ensure people's health, before abruptly ending them in late 2022.

The protests were mostly focused on the COVID restrictions, but some protesters in Beijing also demanded freedom of speech and democracy.

Those who took part in the white paper protests say that following China's re-opening from COVID, the Chinese government has continued to suppress public efforts to mourn pandemic victims and to commemorate the demonstrations.

At the time, police interrogated and briefly detained dozens of participants, while a handful of women were detained for four months in Beijing, according to rights' groups, protesters and friends of those affected.

Chen's film continues to be screened outside China by rights activists and Chinese communities.

(Reporting by Laurie Chen; Editing by Neil Fullick)

China sentences filmmaker to over 3 years in jail for Covid lockdown protests documentary

Shweta Sharma
Tue, January 7, 2025 at 12:27 a.m. MST·4 min read




A Chinese documentary filmmaker has been sentenced to over three years in prison for producing a documentary on China’s crackdown on nationwide protests against the Covid lockdown in 2023, according to Chinese human rights news websites.

Chen Pinlin, who is known by his stage name “Plato”, was first detained on 29 November 2023 and was formally arrested on 5 January 2024 by the Shanghai police for releasing his documentary Urumqi Middle Road on the one-year anniversary of the White Paper Movement.

The White Paper Movement or Blank Paper Revolution was a series of protests that emerged in China in late 2022 during which thousands of demonstrators displayed blank sheets of paper – a symbol of censorship - to express their frustration against the country’s strict "zero-Covid" policy.

The protests were sparked by the outrage over a deadly apartment fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang, in November 2022. The incident reportedly led to deaths that many blamed on Covid lockdown measures that hindered escape and rescue efforts.

Pinlin was held in Baoshan Detention Centre in Shanghai on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – a charge criticised as vague and elastic that authorities use to suppress dissent and maintain social control.

The Chinese human rights news website Weiquanwang said it was learned that he was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months in prison.

“Chen Pinlin, who has been arrested for more than a year, has been treated extremely inhumanely in the detention centre,” it said on Tuesday.

File Chinese policemen pin down a protester and covered his mouth during a protest on a street in Shanghai, China on 27 Nov 2022

The sentencing was first reported by CNN which cited sources familiar with the case. It said that his sentencing came following a three-hour trial behind closed doors.

Another human rights news website Minsheng Guancha reported that the first trial of the case was heard in the Baoshan District Court of Shanghai on Monday.

Pinlin released the documentary, named Not the Foreign Force in English on YouTube and X, formerly Twitter, which were not available in China in late November 2023. The documentary showed the original videos shot on his mobile phone of the protest against the stringent lockdown.

The footage showed people chanting slogans demanding that president Xi Jinping step down.

Protesters hold up blank pieces of paper and chant slogans as they march to protest strict anti-virus measures in Beijing (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Releasing the documentary he said: “I hope to explore why, whenever internal conflicts arise in China, foreign forces are always made the scapegoat. The answer is clear to everyone: the more the government misleads, forgets, and censors, the more we must speak up, remind others, and remember.”

“Only by remembering the ugliness can we strive toward the light. I also hope that China will one day embrace its own light and future.”

The protests were a brief flare of defiance, the most direct challenge to the Communist Party’s authority in decades.

Videos of the protest spread online and gained momentum among those unhappy with the state’s control. In the following days, thousands gathered in Shanghai and over a dozen other cities across China, holding up sheets of paper, shouting slogans and jostling with officers.

The protests were a result of frustration and anger over Mr Xi’s tough new approach to governance that included strict, large-scale lockdowns, mass testing, quarantine measures, and heavy restrictions as the virus spread globally. The lockdown was itself blamed for the number of deaths and accidents in the country.

In 2021, a bus carrying people to a Guizhou quarantine centre crashed, killing 27 in a province where Covid-related deaths since the pandemic began had been just two.

A month later, thousands of workers in an Apple iPhone factory in Zhengzhou clashed with riot police and tore down Covid barricades. There were further outbreaks of violence after reports of more deaths due to the lockdown, including a three-year-old child and a baby.

And the anger reached its peak after 10 residents in Urumqi died in a fire in an apartment building that had been under lockdown for 100 days. Officials appeared to blame residents for not doing enough to control the blaze.