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Jailed Chinese quake activist refuses to keep silent (Extra)
Feb 9, 2010, 9:22 GMT
Beijing - A Chinese rights activist who was sentenced to five years in prison for subversion on Tuesday said he planned to continue speaking out against alleged abuses of power.
In a statement released by supporters, Tan Zuoren said he had 'no grounds to keep silent' after he was convicted of subversion for criticizing the ruling the Communist Party and urging people to commemorate the party's military crackdown on democracy protestors on June 4, 1989.
Tan's supporters said those charges were a pretext to punish him for investigating the death of thousands of schoolchildren in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
'Facing the wrongdoings behind public power, facing the social danger behind bad decisions and special interests, I have no grounds to keep silent and I will not run away,' Tan said in the statement.
'Where there are no mistakes, there are no dissenters,' he said. If there are no dissenters, there is no civil society.'
One of several lawyers supporting him said Tan had prepared the statement to deliver at the end of his trial, but judges prevented him from giving it.
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