Russian and Chinese Show Trials and the Olympics

There are two trials - one in Russia and the other in China - that should be in the minds of all of us right now, even if the Olympic Games are taking up most of the media time and space.
In Moscow, three member of a punk rock group, Pussy Riots, are being tried for hooliganism and inciting religious hatred because they sang a song in a Russian Orthodox church that criticized President Vladimir Putin. The song also criticized the close ties of the Russian Orthodox Church and the government and President Putin.
Putin has asked for leniency for the three, saying they should not be judged too harshly, whereas the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill has denounced their "profanation" of a church.
Nadejda Tolokonnikova, 22, Ekaterina Samoutsevitch, 29, and Maria Alekhina, 24, who have already been held in jail for five months, sat in their barred cage in court yesterday and heard the Russian Prosecutor, Alexander Nikiforov, demand a penalty of three years in work camps for their “crimes.” Nikiforov noted that he was asking for a light sentence because two of the young women have no police records and one of them has young children. Isn’t Russian leniency a thing of beauty.
The defense lawyers have asked for an acquittal and have said that they intend to ask the European Court of Human Rights to consider both the conditions under which the women are being held and the procedural aspects of the trial, which include falsified prosecution documents entered against the accused, threatening defense witnesses and threatening the defense lawyers.
Madonna is in Russia for two concerts - in Moscow and St. Petersburg - to call for clemency and release for the three singers.
Other international entertainers, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sting and The Pet Shop Boys are calling for dismissal of the charges, as are many Russian human rights activists.
The European Union says it is disturbed by the conditions of detention of the three accused, as well as by the intimidation of their lawyers.
Meanwhile, in Russia’s neighbor, China, a trial that will start next week has all the makings of a first rate political scandal.
Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced former Politburo member Bo Xilai, who is the son of one of the Eight Immortals who led the Communist revolution in China, is expected to start in the eastern city of Hefei.
Gu is accused of poisoning a British business partner, Neil Heywood, last November in a dispute over money. It has been claimed anonymously that Heywood was helping the couple to secretly smuggle money out of China. Heywood has lived in China for ten years and is married to a Chinese woman.
If convicted, Gu could face the death penalty, but a friend said her life is expected to be spared. Each of the defendants will be allowed to have two relatives at the trial, which is expected to be speedy, according to the friend.
When Heywood was found dead in his hotel room, officials quickly blamed his death on excessive alcohol and cremated his body without an autopsy.
But controversy began in February, when Bo's longtime lieutenant, Wang Lijun, sought refuge at the U.S. Consulate in nearby Chengdu. Wang is the former police chief who managed Bo's anti-crime push, which Beijing found to be too excessive and reminiscent of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Wang asked for political asylum, apparently fearing for his life and was allegedly in possession of incriminating information against his boss. Wang’s appearance made the Communist authorities re-open the Heywood case, leading to the charge of murder against Gu and an associate, Zhang Xiaojun.
Wang was taken into custody once he left the consulate for entering the diplomatic post without authorization.
Gu and Zhang were arrested in early April and have not seen their relatives since then, according to the same friend.
The Xinhua news agency also announced in April that Bo had been stripped of his seats on the Communist Party's Central Committee for an unspecified "serious breach of regulations."
Authorities say Gu and her son fought with Heywood over "economic interests," and she regarded him as a threat to her son's safety.
Although Great Britain is following the trial, British Foreign Minister William Hague has formally denied that Heywood was a British M6 operative, even though he managed a company in China formed by several ex-M6 employees.
The Chinese hierarchy is trying to put its best face on the trial, to keep it from becoming a cause celebre in China, where both Bo and Gu are well-known public figures.
But, expert China watchers point out that whatever happens, the members of the Politburo will not be sleeping easily, because such corruption is widely present in senior Chinese political figures, who often become very wealthy because of their positions.
These two trials point out the long way both Russia and China have to go before they can represent themselves as democratic in any sense of the word.
It may also explain why China has become the new Russia in the Olympic Games family of nations. The world used to view with suspicion every Russian victory, suspecting doping or other tricks. Now, China is on the receiving end of such generalized suspicion.
While many - probably most - of China’s Olympic athletes are clean and honest competitors, uneasiness lurks when they win, not because of they themselves, but because they represent countries where trickery, political elites, and staged trials of political adversaries are commonplace. The suspicions about the regimes just naturally spill over into questions about the validity of the successes of their athletes.