Chinese court sentences dissident to 3 1/2 -year term

BEIJING —  A Chinese court sentenced a prominent human rights activist today to 3 1/2 years in prison for criticizing the Communist Party, a verdict that illustrates China’s determination to crack down on dissent ahead of the Summer Olympics.

Hu Jia, 34, has been a fierce critic of China’s controversial policies on AIDS, the environment and Tibet. He was put under house arrest in Beijing for 200 days before police took him away late last year while his wife was bathing their newborn child.

The Beijing Intermediate People’s Court this morning found Hu guilty of “inciting subversion of state power.” The charges were based on articles he wrote on the Internet critical of the government, as well as interviews he gave to foreign media.

“This is a huge blow to free speech in China,” said Li Fangping, Hu’s lawyer.

Despite the intimidation and limits on his personal freedom, Hu had continued to publicly condemn Beijing for its human rights record and for targeting petitioners and activists in various campaigns to muffle dissent. His trial last month lasted four hours and coincided with a mounting government crackdown on unrest in Tibet.

Li said he was repeatedly interrupted during his attempt to defend his client and had to hand in a written statement instead because he was not allowed to finish speaking.

Hu’s wife, Zeng Jinyan, and his mother were allowed to attend the reading of the verdict, Li said. He said Zeng and the couple’s 5-month-old daughter otherwise remain under house arrest with the telephone cut off. She is followed by plainclothes police even for doctor’s appointments for the baby, he said.

According to Chinese law, Hu has 10 days to appeal. Li said they had not decided what to do.

The conviction is likely to draw renewed international criticism of China, which is already reeling from a public relations setback with the Tibet bloodshed.

Hu has become a symbol of the fight against rights abuse. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other Western officials have raised his case with the Chinese government.

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Susan Stevenson in Beijing said today: “We are dismayed by the verdict” and called the charge against him “specious.”

Rights activists released statements condemning the conviction. “The manipulations that led to this guilty verdict are a blatant perversion of justice,” said T. Kumar, Asia advocacy director for Amnesty International. “It is deeply disturbing that officials would so openly turn their backs on commitments to improve human rights in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.”

Renee Xia, international director of the Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said, “For the Chinese authorities, the Olympics is a political game -- if you criticize violations committed in the name of the Games, then you are an enemy of the state.”

Hu had posted on the Internet information on matters such as peasant protests and police abuses that are often censored by the government.

“The only means of rule left for the Chinese Communist Party are lies, terror and violence,” an overseas Chinese-language website had quoted Hu as saying last year. “The party law-and-order authorities have become the country’s biggest Mafia.”