TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: China Jails OnLine Editor for 'Subversion'

China Jails OnLine Editor for 'Subversion'

Reuters News Wire (reuters@telecom-digest.org)
Mon, 19 Mar 2007 12:58:32 -0500

A Chinese court jailed an editor of a news portal for six years on
Monday for inciting subversion by publishing anti-government essays,
his lawyer said, the latest case in a government crackdown on dissent.

The Intermediate People's Court in Ningbo in the eastern coastal
province of Zhejiang convicted Zhang Jianhong, better known by his pen
name is Li Hong, of "inciting to subvert state power," lawyer Li
Jianqiang told Reuters.

"The sentence is too heavy," the lawyer said by telephone. "The
accusations that Li Hong attacked the government through his essays is
total nonsense. All he did was to exercise his freedom of speech
guaranteed in China's constitution."

Zhang was detained last September and the "Aegean Sea" Web site he ran
was shut down.

Court officials could not be reached for comment.

China is the world's leading jailer of journalists, with at least 32
in custody, and another 50 Internet campaigners also in prison,
according to Paris-based press watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

In August, a Beijing court jailed a Hong Kong-based reporter of
Singapore's Straits Times for five years on spying charges, days after
a court jailed a Chinese researcher for the New York Times for three
years for fraud but dismissed a more serious charge of illegally
leaking state secrets.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

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