A Chinese court sentenced a leading Chinese dissident to 10 years in prison for urging democratic reform of the one-party state, an unusually harsh sentence that rights campaigners say could bode ill for other detained activists.
The Suining Intermediate People's Court in the south-western province of Sichuan ruled on Friday that Liu Xianbin was guilty of "inciting subversion of state power," Liu's wife, Chen Mingxian, told Reuters by telephone. Liu Xianbin's sentence is the second-longest term ever handed down for inciting subversion after Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, who has been serving an 11-year sentence since 2009 for co-writing the Charter 08 manifesto that called for sweeping political reforms, rights groups said.
The verdict and lengthy sentence shows the Chinese Communist Party will not relent in its ongoing crackdown against dissent, risking strains over human rights with Washington and other Western capitals. The 43-year-old activist had spent more than eight months in detention before his trial, which lasted just over two hours, Chen said.
"At the end, Liu Xianbin wanted to make his closing statement, but the judge did not give him the opportunity to be heard," Chen said, adding that Liu's statement of self-defence was taken away by court officials. "The only words he told the court were: 'I have no guilt. I protest.'"
The trial comes as China has launched a crackdown against dissidents, many of whom have disappeared or been charged with subversion - a charge that authorities commonly level against people critical of the ruling Communist Party. Liu Xianbin, a long-time rights activist, was a participant in the 1989 protests on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, after which he was jailed in 1991 and then sentenced to another two-and-a-half years in 1992. He was detained by authorities last June for writing four or five articles in 2009 that called for a non-violent struggle for democratic reform and recounted his time in prison.
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