Chinese activist Hu Jia jailed ahead of Olympics

BEIJING-[[[[[[[[[[Chinese activist Hu Jia was jailed Thursday for three-and-a-half years for subversion, his lawyer said as rights groups said the charge is a campaign by China to silence dissent before the Olympics. The United States and the European Union immediately spoke out in defence of Hu, who became the second Chinese dissident in less than two weeks to be jailed after using the Beijing Olympics to highlight human rights problems in China.Hu, for many years one of China's highest-profile human rights campaigners, was found guilty at a Beijing court of "incitement to subvert state power" following a one-day trial last month, lawyer Li Fangping said.Li said the subversion charge had related to the 34-year-old Hu posting articles on the Internet about human rights issues and speaking with foreign reporters.China's official Xinhua news agency carried a small article saying that Hu had confessed to his crime."Hu spread malicious rumours and committed libel in an attempt to subvert the state's political power and socialist system," Xinhua said, citing the court verdict.However Li said Hu had pleaded not guilty and he would advise his client to appeal.Hu's wife, Zeng Jinyan, 24, who recently gave birth to their first child and is also a prominent rights activist, said the verdict was the culmination of four years of harassment by authorities."He's been put under surveillance, been kidnapped. He's been put under house arrest and now they have sentenced him to three and a half years," Zeng told reporters outside the courthouse as she broke down in tears."This is irrational and unfair."]]]]]]]]]]]In one article he wrote with fellow activist and lawyer Teng Biao last year that was recently published by Human Rights Watch, Hu called on visitors coming to Beijing for the Olympics not to be fooled by the trappings of development.[[[["You will see skyscrapers, spacious streets, modern stadiums and enthusiastic people. You will see the truth, but not the whole truth, just as you see only the tip of an iceberg," the pair wrote."You may not know that the flowers, smiles, harmony and prosperity are built on a base of grievances, tears, imprisonment, torture and blood."]]]]Hu's verdict followed a jail sentence handed down on March 24 to Yang Chunlin, a former factory worker, on similar subversion charges.Yang, 52, was detained after he collected more than 10,000 signatures for a petition entitled: "We want human rights, not the Olympics".Rights groups have regularly criticised China's use of the subversion charge as a tool to silence anyone critical of the Communist Party, a campaign they have said has intensified ahead of the Games and highlighted by Hu's sentence."This verdict is... a warning to any other activists in China who dare to raise human rights concerns publicly," said Mark Allison, East Asia researcher for Amnesty International."It also betrays promises made by Chinese officials that human rights would improve in the run-up to the Olympics."The US embassy spokeswoman in Beijing, Susan Stevenson, described the charge against Hu as "specious"."In this Olympic year, we urge China to seize the opportunity to put its best face forward and take steps to improve its record on human rights and religious freedom," Stevenson told AFP.The European Union's spokesman in Beijing, William Fingleton, said Hu should never have gone on trial and called for him to be immediately released.Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last month denied that Beijing was cracking down on dissidents ahead of the Olympics."I think such accusations are totally unfounded. There is no such question at all," Wen said.Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu on Thursday repeated that denial, and insisted that Hu's case had been treated in accordance with China's laws.The International Olympic Committee refused to comment on Hu's case but denied that China's human rights record had worsened because of the Games, as charged by Amnesty and other rights groups."To go that far to say the Games contributed to a worsening situation of human rights (in China), I mean I would call that blatantly untrue," senior IOC member Hein Verbruggen told reporters in Beijing.Hu's verdict also came as China's communist rulers remained under international pressure over its handling of a crackdown on more than three weeks of unrest in Tibet.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080403/ts_afp/chinarightsdissidentoly2008_080403103805;_ylt=AvSiP_8wyobxwq.5.lnrwvCFOrgF
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