A prominent human-rights lawyer has gone on trial in China facing charges of "inciting a disturbance" for doing legal defence work for farmers who have had their land seized by government officials.
Ni Yulan and her husband, Dong Ji-Cheen, were detained in April along with hundreds of other activists, but their trial lacks transparency.
Early on Thursday morning, police vans brought Ni to a courthouse in Beijing, but journalists who arrived to cover the trial and diplomats who had been sent to observe were quickly stopped from filming, ushered into a building across the street and told they would not be allowed to film or report.
Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan reports from the Chinese capital.
