Chinese director faces trial over film about constitution

A Chinese filmmaker who made a documentary about his country’s constitution has been arrested on charges of “illegal business activities,” just days after a government pledge to uphold the rule of law according to the same constitution.

Shen Yongping was warned by public security that he could go to jail if he continued to make his film, called 100 Years of Constitutional Governance, but the 33-year-old decided to finish it anyway, his lawyer Zhang Xuezhong said in an email interview. He faces five years in jail if convicted.

Shen is claiming political persecution because he says the charge of “illegal business activities” does not come into play as he did not profit from the film. His lawyer said was not a national security issue.

The film looks at China’s constitutional governance from the period of the Qing dynasty, which ended in 1911, until the present day.

Zhang was arrested in April, and will be tried on November 4th in Beijing.

Shen's case comes a week after a high-level Communist Party meeting which pledged better supervision of China's constitution under the National People's Congress, China's parliament.

This week police in Beijing formally charged Tie Liu, an elderly writer whose memoirs described the plight of victims of Chairman Mao Zedong’s “anti-rightist” campaigns of the 1950s.

President Xi Jinping has taken a hard line against dissents and scores of activists, writers and artists have been rounded up in recent months.

In August, a well-known Chinese dissident Gao Zhisheng was released having allegedly suffering physical and psychological abuse in jail.