China jails political dissident for five yearsABS-CBNNews Tuesday, August 5, 2003 4:57:0 p.m BEIJING - China has jailed for five years a veteran dissident who served time after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and recently wrote to Beijing's communist leaders demanding democracy, a rights group said on Tuesday. Zhao Changqing's sentencing came as a U.S.-based Chinese scholar went on trial behind closed doors in Beijing charged with illegal entry and spying for Taiwan. The Xi'an Intermediate People's Court convicted Zhao, 36, of subversion on Monday following a closed trial on July 10, the New York-based Human Rights in China said in a statement. Zhao, a former middle school teacher, was detained last November as one of 192 political activists who signed an open letter to China's 16th Party Congress calling for political reform, the group said. The letter, written by Zhao to the country's most senior leaders, made six demands, including a reassessment of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre that the government has ruled was a counter-revolutionary rebellion. It also called for expanding democratic elections to the national level and releasing all political prisoners, the group said. Police rounded up at least a half dozen pro-democracy activists who signed the petition and have charged several with inciting subversion. Zhao participated in the 1989 demonstrations and was imprisoned for half a year after soldiers and tanks crushed the movement on June 4. He was later arrested on charges of endangering state security and sentenced to three years in prison after protesting his district government had violated election laws. Zhao was released in March 2001, the group said. "This trial was just another form of intimidation through an unfair legal process," said Liu Qing, the group's president. "It is especially objectionable that a trial over an open letter was held in secret on the pretext of protecting state secrets." China has a broad definition of "state secrets" and has used the subversion charge to arrest many political dissidents. Yang Jianli, a U.S.-based Chinese scholar prominent in pro-democracy circles, went on trial behind closed doors in Beijing on Monday, his wife said. Yang's trial comes after the U.S. Senate last week condemned his 15-month detention and called for his release. A permanent U.S. resident, Yang was arrested in April 2002. Authorities accused him of entering China on a friend's passport and traveling for a week with a fake identity card -- mainly to observe labor unrest in the northeastern rust belt.
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