Meanwhile in China...

According to today’s Guardian Chinese democracy activist Liu Xianbin (no relative of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo)has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for advocating government change in online articles.

The trial came amid a crackdown on activism in China in which dozens of lawyers and activists have vanished, been interrogated, held under house arrest or criminally detained for subversion.

Liu Xianbin, who has previously spent a decade in prison, was found guilty of inciting subversion of state power after a trial that lasted just a few hours, his wife, Chen Mingxian, said.

Chinese law says inciting subversion carries a penalty of up to five years in prison, but a court can impose a longer sentence if the offence is deemed particularly grave.

"The 10-year sentence to me, because we've already been through 10 years … is a repeat of the painful process, one in which I can only watch and wait anxiously," said Chen, who is a schoolteacher.

Liu was a founding member of the China Democracy party and was convicted in 1999 of subversion of state power and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He was released in November 2008.
After his release, Liu continued to be involved in several high-profile human rights activities. He was a signatory to the Charter 08 manifesto, which called for an end to single-party rule and advocated democratic political reforms.

What can one add to this? China’s atrocious human rights record speaks for itself
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Chinese food scandal protestor jailed

Today’s Telegraph reports that Zhao Lianhai, who created a website to highlight the plight of children poisoned in a major food adulteration scandal in China, has been jailed for 2 1/2 years.


Zhao created the site in 2009 after his son was poisoned after being fed adulterated formula milk. He was one of about 300,000 Chinese toddlers who were poisoned (of which at least six of them died) by milk that contained melamine, an industrial chemical that was added to make the milk appear to contain more protein than was actually the case.

The website quickly became a focal point for thousands of parents who were outraged at the crisis, and that the issue had initially been covered up.

As more and more parents began to call for justice and compensation, and Mr Zhao began to press their case publicly, he came to the attention of the Chinese authorities.

Last November, he was arrested by the police and then charged in March with "creating a disturbance". His lawyer, Li Fangping, said the evidence for the charge had been that Mr Zhao had given a media interview on a public pavement, held a dinner in a restaurant for a dozen parents of other victims, and that he had held up a small sign in protest outside a trial of milk company executives responsible for the poisoning.

As his sentence was announced, Mr Zhao protested in court, stripping off his prisoner's uniform and refusing to be handcuffed. "I am not guilty!" he said. Mr Li said he would appeal the sentence, and that Mr Zhao was in "quite good health, but anxious. He has not seen his wife and two children for almost a year."

Mr Zhao has already served one year of his sentence, and will now have another year-and-a-half of prison time.

Three people have been sentenced to death for their role in the toxic milk case, and the general manager and chairwoman of Sanlu, the milk company at the heart of the scandal, was given a life sentence. Dozens of officials, dairy executives and farmers have been punished for allowing the contamination to take place.

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