Shanghai:

Chinese journalist and #Metoo activist Sophia Huang Xueqin was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday on charges of “inciting subversion of state power” after she became a symbol of the country’s stalled feminist movement.

She was sentenced alongside labour activist Wang Jianbing, who was handed three years and six months, a group of their supporters said on social media platform X.

Huang wrote on social media about her experience of workplace sexual harassment as a young journalist at a Chinese news agency, in the wake of the global #MeToo movement.

With Wang, she was involved in running a regular gathering in the southern city of Guangzhou, a member of the supporters’ group told AFP last year, before they were both detained in 2021.

On Friday, the court said the meetings, which took place from November 2020, “incited participants’ dissatisfaction with Chinese state power under the pretext of discussing social issues”, according to the “Free Huang XueQin & Wang JianBing” group.

Their trial took place in 2023 behind closed doors, with international rights groups raising concerns over the pair’s health during their detention.

On Friday, supporters posted pictures they said showed barriers erected around Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court, where the sentencing took place, with a heavy police presence.

Attempts to contact the court were unsuccessful, and the sentencing is not currently available on China’s national court document database.

But supporters said Huang was accused of “publishing distorted, provocative articles and speeches attacking the national government on social media”, and “gathering overseas organisers to participate in online training for ‘non-violent actions'”.

 ‘Malicious, groundless’ 

Huang had been previously held by authorities, after returning from reporting on Hong Kong’s enormous pro-democracy protests in 2019.

She had been due to start studying in the United Kingdom when she was detained again in 2021.

Wang, described as a “low-profile veteran” labour activist by friends, was accused on Friday of posting “untrue articles and speeches attacking China’s political system and government”.

He had also joined “(subversive) overseas online groups” including one commemorating the deadly Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989, the court was quoted as saying.

Amnesty International’s China director Sarah Brooks blasted the sentences as “malicious and totally groundless convictions”.

“Sophia Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing have been jailed solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression, and they must be immediately and unconditionally released,” Brooks said.

Earlier on Friday, the Committee to Protect Journalists called for Huang’s “unconditional and immediate release and for the charges against her to be dropped”.

Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian defended the Chinese judicial system on Friday when asked about the sentencing, saying China “guarantees the legitimate rights of every citizen in accordance with the law”.

“At the same time, anyone who breaks the law will receive legal punishment,” Lin said, without confirming the details of the sentences.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Paris:

A top French museum has filed a police complaint after two women spray-painted a famous 19th-century painting by Gustave Courbet which it had loaned to another gallery, official said Friday.

The women have been charged with spraying the words “MeToo” on “The Origin of the World”, a nude painted by French artist Courbet, and four other works.

The 1866 painting was on loan from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris to the Pompidou-Metz in the northeastern city of Metz. It was protected by a glass pane on which the words were scrawled.

“Stained with red paint, the work was taken down for examination by a qualified restorer. The frame has received numerous splashes of paint that could have lasting marks even after restoration,” the Musee d’Orsay said in a statement, adding that it had “filed a complaint”.

The museum said the painting would not return to the Metz exhibition that closes in May.

Metz prosecutor Yves Badorc said five works had been sprayed with the words “MeToo” and one was stolen.

French-Luxembourg performance artist Deborah de Robertis told AFP she organised the operation carried out by two other people, as part of a performance titled: “You Don’t Separate the Woman from the Artist”.

In a video sent to AFP by de Robertis, one woman tagged Courbet’s work with red paint and then a second sprays another. They then chant “MeToo” before being dragged away by security guards.

In an open letter, de Robertis denounced the behaviour of six men in the art world, describing them as “predators” and “censors”.

De Robertis said they had also seized an embroidery work by French artist Annette Messager as “reappropriation”.

The prosecutor said a third person — who was not arrested — could have been behind the disappearance of the 1991 Messager work titled “I Think Therefore I Suck”.

De Robertis has a work on display at the venue in Metz — a photograph of a 2014 performance at the Musee d’Orsay in which she posed naked underneath Courbet’s painting.

A French court in 2020 ordered de Robertis to pay a 2,000-euro ($2,150) fine for appearing naked in 2018 in Lourdes in southwest France, a Catholic pilgrimage site for those who believe the Virgin Mary appeared there.

She has also shown herself naked in front of the “Mona Lisa” painting at the Louvre in Paris.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

According to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Harvey Weinstein will appear in a New York City court on May 1, 2024. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Disgraced Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was hospitalised on April 27 upon his return to New York after the city’s highest court overturned his 2020 conviction on sex crime charges.

The 4-3 decision was a shock reversal of one of the defining cases of the #MeToo movement, but Weinstein will remain jailed on a separate 16-year rape sentence handed down in California.

Also Read | A look at past and future cases Harvey Weinstein has faced as his New York conviction is thrown out

“The NYC Department of Corrections determined that Weinstein needed immediate medical attention,” his lawyer Arthur L Aidala told AFP in a statement.

“A myriad of tests are being performed on Harvey and he is being kept for observation.”

Police told U.S. media that Weinstein had been taken to New York’s Bellevue Hospital.

On Thursday, the city’s Court of Appeals found the trial judge erred in admitting the testimony of additional women who were allegedly abused by Weinstein but who were not named in the charges brought against him, and ordered a new trial.

Bombshell allegations broke against the Oscar-winning producer in 2017, launching the #MeToo movement that paved the way for women to fight back against sexual violence in the workplace.

Weinstein, 72, was convicted in a New York court in 2020 of the rape and sexual assault of ex-actress Jessica Mann in 2013, and of forcibly performing oral sex on former production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006.

He was later sentenced to 23 years in prison.