China rights lawyer charged after a year in detention

One of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers, who has been held for more than a year, was criminally charged on Friday for comments he made online, officials said, prompting immediate denunciations from advocacy groups.

Pu Zhiqiang, a celebrated rights campaigner who has represented dissident artist Ai Weiwei, was detained last May in the run-up to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings. Pu, 50, was accused of “inciting ethnic hatred” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, for comments made on the Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo, Beijing prosecutors said online. The charges, which carry maximum jail sentences of 10 and five years respectively, are said by his legal team to stem from 28 posts he wrote on the service.