After 19 months behind bars, one of China’s most admired civil rights lawyers set to go on trial accused of sending irreverent tweets.In another era, Pu Zhiqiang might have live-tweeted the Tiananmen massacre. Instead, as the bloodbath unfolded around him on that pre-smartphone night in the early summer of 1989, the student leader took a solemn vow: if he made it out with his life he would use it to give voice to those who had died. “That was unquestionably a pivotal moment for him,” said William J Dobson, an American writer who spent time with the Tiananmen survivor while writing a book on 21st century dictatorships. Read more
