With US visit over, China to try string of dissidents

Lindsay Beck

BEIJING (Reuters) - At least four Chinese journalists and Internet writers are expected to stand trial this month just weeks after President Hu Jintao presented a softer line on human rights during a trip to the United States.

Early this year China, which sometimes frees political prisoners to build goodwill and bargaining power ahead of major diplomatic visits, released two jailed journalists and let a Tibetan nun imprisoned for 15 years travel to the United States.

But with Hu's April trip to Washington over, so are the diplomatic niceties, analysts believe.

Yang Xiaoqing, a journalist in central Hunan province whose reporting exposed alleged graft among local officials, is expected to stand trial next week, charged with extortion and blackmail.

Li Yuanlong, a reporter in southwestern Guizhou, has been charged with inciting subversion for posting essays critical of the government on the Internet.

And Internet writers Yang Tianshui and Li Jianping are set to be tried this month over critical postings.

"Most of these cases were originally scheduled for February and March, but they were delayed because Hu Jintao went to the United States," said Li Jianqiang, a lawyer representing two of the four men.

"Now is a better time -- it's after his trip and before June 4," he said, referring to the date of the military crackdown on Tiananmen Square student demonstrators in 1989.

The human rights record in China, where everything from critical Internet postings to religious worship can be punished with a jail term, has long been a source of friction in relations between Washington and Beijing.

"EMBARRASSING"

With rights on the agenda at the meeting between Hu and President Bush, China could not have gone ahead with the prosecutions during the visit, said Liu Xiaobo, president of the China chapter of International PEN, an association founded to defend freedom of expression.

"On the one hand he'd be talking about human rights and on the other hand China would be continuously opening new trials for those dissident writers," said Liu. "While Hu Jintao was in the United States, that would have been embarrassing."

China's rights record burst to the forefront of the visit when a reporter for a newspaper supportive of Falun Gong, the spiritual meditation movement banned in China, heckled Hu during his speech on the White House lawn, telling him to stop persecuting the movement's members.

But behind closed doors, China indicated it was willing to resolve three of six long-standing human rights cases after Hu returned home, U.S. officials said. They offered no details on the cases.

Democracy campaigner Yang Jianli, jailed since 2002, and New York Times researcher Zhao Yan, in custody for nearly two years, were seen as the most likely candidates for release in connection with Hu's trip, but both remain behind bars.

In a surprise move, China in March dropped the charges against Zhao. But nearly two months on he is still in detention.

"It's totally non-transparent," said Jerome Cohen, a specialist in Chinese law. "They are smearing their state's reputation."

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Source: "Reuters".