Back in March, China Real Time relayed findings from the human rights group Dui Hua Foundation that suggested China’s security forces had taken a savvier, softer-seeming approach to the silencing of dissidents.
It now appears that might only be partly right.
Dui Hua’s original analysis found that the number of indictments on state security charges dropped 21% between 2012 and 2013.
Such charges, including subversion and separatism, tend to carry heftier sentences and frequently attract international criticism. At the same time, the group said, there appeared to be an increasing tendency to charge dissidents with less politicized crimes such as illegal assembly – a sign that authorities had not stopped going after political opponents, but perhaps had become more sensitive to appearances when doing so.
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