But Mr. Teng noted the repression of Uyghurs in the far western region of Xinjiang, and the life sentence handed down to Ilham Tohti, a Uyghur activist and academic, under Mr. Xi. “They don’t care about human rights or the Constitution or international human rights standards,” he said of the government.
Several other lawyers and activists from the Xiamen gathering were also detained. Mr. Xu’s girlfriend, Li Qiaochu, who had spoken on Mr. Xu’s behalf after his detention, is also awaiting trial.
Yaqiu Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said she was personally pained by the sentences, noting that she had looked up to Mr. Xu as a college student in China in the late 2000s. The admiration he elicited was apparent when he was first tried and sentenced in 2014, when foreign diplomats and ordinary citizens gathered outside the Beijing courthouse, despite police intimidation, in protest.
Nine years later, heightened surveillance make such organization nearly impossible, and many of the lawyers’ supporters have themselves been jailed or forced into exile, Ms. Wang said. And censorship had dimmed Mr. Xu’s public profile.
“Now, it’s an entirely different era,” she said. “Young people, college students now have no idea who Xu Zhiyong is.”
Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Taipei, Taiwan.