Sentence for dissident signals Beijing's tougher stance

Monday, December 28, 2009

The Financial Times
By Geoff Dyer in Beijing
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In this Oct. 23, 2009 file photo, pro-democracy activists hold pictures of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was arrested after co-authoring a bold manifesto urging civil rights and political reforms, outside the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong. Police have finally presented a case against prominent dissident Liu Xiaobo, who has been jailed for a year without charge after helping produce a high-profile manifesto calling for sweeping democratic reforms in China, a lawyer said Wednesday.(Kin Cheung, File/AP Photo)

A Chinese court has sentenced a leading dissident to 11 years in jail for "inciting subversion of state power", the clearest signal yet, according to analysts, foreign officials and human rights groups, that China has over the past two years reduced the already limited space for political dissent.

Although there were high hopes that events such as last year's Olympics in Beijing would encourage greater political openness in China, the unusually harsh sentence handed down to Liu Xiaobo on Christmas day has reinforced the impression that the more conservative voices in the Chinese leadership are in the ascendancy.

"The conviction and extremely harsh sentencing of Liu Xiaobo mark a further severe restriction on the scope of freedom of expression in China," said Navi Pillay, UN high commissioner for human rights.

The charges against Mr Liu, 54, a former university professor who was also imprisoned after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, were based on six articles he published on the internet and his role in organising Charter 08, a petition which called for the end to one-party rule in China. He is to appeal against the sentence, his wife said at the weekend.

Legal experts said his sentence was the longest on record for "inciting subversion" since changes in the law in 1997.

Hu Jia, an activist, was jailed for three and a half years last March for the same charges in a trial which, at the time, human rights groups said was an attempt to muzzle critics of the Chinese Communist party ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

In the past two years there have been waves of security clampdowns, arrests and harassment of dissidents ahead of sensitive events, including the Olympics and the recent visit to China of Barack Obama, the US president.

The trial and swift conviction of Mr Liu have indicated that the more repressive political mood is not just a temporary phenomenon.

Workmen maintain security surveillance cameras in Beijing

"It seems that the more conservative, stability-above-all elements in the leadership have far more sway these days," said Joshua Rosenzweig at the Dui Hua Foundation, which lobbies Beijing over political prisoners. "It is clear that this is not simply linked to certain sensitive events."

He pointed to official figures showing a sharp increase in the number of arrests and convictions for "endangering state security" - these doubled in 2008 over 2007 and were nearly five times higher than in 2005.

Some of last year's arrests are likely to have been in connection with the riots and unrest in Tibet and attacks on police in Xinjiang.

The trial also underlines Beijing's increased efforts to control the internet. Mr Liu once predicted the internet would have a huge political impact in China. "The internet is God's present to China," he wrote in 2006. "It is the best tool for the Chinese people in their project to cast off slavery and strive for freedom."

Earlier this month, the Chinese government introduced measures to control the internet, including rules that limit the ability of individuals to set up a website and increase the scrutiny of companies with websites.

This year China has blocked Twitter, YouTube and Facebook as well as hundreds of other websites in a drive the authorities say is aimed at limiting access to pornography and preventing internet scams.

There had been speculation that access to these websites might be restored after a period of sensitive anniversaries which culminated in the October 1 celebrations of 60 years of Communist rule in China, but these sites remain blocked.