Rights groups condemn China's jailing of quake activist

Feb 10, 2010, 3:56 GMT

Beijing - International rights groups on Wednesday condemned China's jailing of an activist who investigated the deaths of thousands of schoolchildren in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

'Yet again, a Chinese citizen is punished for exercising his right to freedom of expression,' Sharon Hom, executive director of New York-based Human Rights in China, said one day after Tan Zuoren was sentenced to five years in prison for subversion.

'Tan Zuoren's conviction and sentence remind us once again that the Chinese government continues to refuse to take responsibility for its actions during the June 4 [1989] crackdown and for the corruption that led to the deaths of innocent children,' Hom said.

Tan was convicted of 'inciting subversion of state power' after he criticized the ruling Communist Party and circulated e-mails urging people to commemorate the party's military crackdown on democracy protestors in Beijing on June 4, 1989, his lawyers said.

But Tan's main lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang, and other supporters said officials had ordered Tan's arrest because he compiled a list of children who died in the earthquake and an independent report on the collapse of school buildings where many of the children died.

Poor construction is believed to have led to the collapses, killing 5,335 children, according to the government.

'This punishment is both harsh and unfair,' said Renee Xia, the international director of the Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Defenders.

'Tan's sentence is a powerful statement of intolerance from a regime which is becoming increasingly hostile towards human rights defenders,' Xia said in a statement.

Tan was the second activist sentenced on charges linked to the deaths of children in collapsed school buildings during the Sichuan earthquake, which killed at least 80,000 people.

On Monday, a Chinese court rejected an appeal by Huang Qi, an activist who was sentenced in November to three years in prison for 'illegal possession of state secrets,' a charge apparently linked to his reports of protests by parents of children killed in the earthquake.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said the 'severe jail sentences' against Huang and Tan were 'passed without due process.'

'We appeal to the supreme court and justice ministry to review these two cases and to investigate the use of violence against the Hong Kong journalists who wanted to cover Tan's hearing,' the group said.

Reporters Without Borders said police 'arrested and manhandled' nine Hong Kong-based journalists outside the court in Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan province.

Police tried to move the journalists away from the court early Tuesday to stop them filming, Hui Sun, a reporter for Hong Kong Commercial Radio, told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

'When we all refused to cooperate with them, some police started to push reporters to leave,' Hui was quoted as saying. 'Some physical confrontations took place.'

Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang expressed concern over the treatment of the journalists by Chengdu police.

One camera operator suffered minor injuries to his hands, the newspaper said.