China jails online activist for six years on subversion charges

Mar 19, 2007, 12:07 GMT

Beijing - A Chinese court sentenced a former website editor to six years in prison after convicting him of subversion for posting online articles that 'amounted to agitation aimed at toppling the Chinese government,' state media reported Monday.

The Intermediate People's Court in the eastern city of Ningbo found Zhang Jianhong guilty of posting more than 60 articles online in which he 'slandered the government and China's social system,' the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Zhang posted the articles on overseas websites in mid-2006 under the pseudonym Li Hong after his own website was shut down for 'illegal practices.'

The court treated Zhang, 48, leniently because he had 'showed remorse' since his arrest in September, the agency said.

A media-rights group last month said China led the world in technological and judicial controls over online dissent with 52 people in Chinese jails for internet-related offences at the end of last year.

Despite the huge growth of internet use, the ruling Communist Party maintains control of the Internet through sophisticated filtering tools and cooperation with domestic and global information-technology firms, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in an annual report on media freedom.

Zhang is a dissident writer and poet who belongs to the Chinese branch of the independent writers association PEN.

He served 18 months in a 're-education through labour' camp after he was charged with distributing 'counterrevolutionary propaganda' during the 1989 pro-democracy campaign.

After Zhang's arrest last year, Reporters Without Borders said China was mounting a new crackdown on pro-democracy and human-rights activists, including 'harassment, threats and arbitrary arrests.'

Last week, China's top media supervisor said the government planned tighter control of blogs and webcasts under a new internet publishing law.

China's internet police already block hundreds of websites that are deemed politically sensitive and try to keep content broadly in line with the ruling Communist Party's ideology.

Tens of thousands of small internet cafes have been closed with the government favouring large chains that can be relied upon to monitor and control online activity.