A Chinese court hands prominent AIDS activist Hu Jia a three and half year
prison sentence in a trial that has prompted international criticism from
human rights groups.

BEIJING, CHINA (APRIL 3, 2008) (REUTERS)

A Chinese court on Thursday (April 3) sentenced well-known dissident
Hu Jia to three and a half years for subversion, his lawyer said.
    The decision is likely to draw more international criticism of the
country's political controls ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
    The Beijing Number One Intermediate People's Court found the 34-year
old human rights activist guilty of "inciting subversion of state
power" for criticising the ruling Communist Party. Hu had argued he was
not guilty.
    Starting with advocacy for rural AIDS sufferers, Hu emerged as one of
the nation's most vocal advocates of democratic rights, religious freedom and
self-determination for Tibet, which has recently been shaken by protests and a
security crackdown.
    His conviction is likely to become a focus for critics of the Communist
Party's strict controls on dissent and protest ahead of the Beijing Olympic
Games in August.
    U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raised Hu's case when in
Beijing in February, and the European Union and other Western governments have
also pressed China on the case.
    His wife, Zeng Jinyan, who has also often criticised the Chinese
government, and their infant daughter remain under house arrest, with their
telephone line cut off. During the court sentencing, Zeng Jinyan was present
under police escort.
    "Yes, his mother and his wife will be permitted to attend his
hearing and this is according to Chinese law because its the verdict not the
trial," said Hu's lawyer Li Fangping.
    Hu was detained by police in late December after spending more than 200
days under house arrest in a Beijing apartment complex called Bobo Freedom
City.
    Friends and well-wishers waited outside the courtroom to hear the
result of the verdict. One supporter, who would not give her name, had been
escorted back to her home province in the past for petitioning in Beijing.

    "I heard that Hu Jia's verdict was today so I came back to support
him wholeheartedly. Hu Jia hasn't done anything wrong, we all support
him," said the petitioner.
    Amnesty International said this week the Beijing Olympics had so far
failed to bring the improvement in Chinese citizens' rights that the
government said the event would foster.
    Hu kept Internet and telephone contact with dissidents, disgruntled
citizens and foreign journalists, and his dispatches on an overseas
Chinese-language Web site formed the heart of the prosecution's accusations,
one of his lawyers said.
    "What he is being charged with today are his speeches made between
May 2006 and October 2007, with his views expressed in five articles and two
interviews. Our defence is that the speeches were made in 2001, with its
formal legal proceedings starting on August 2006. Besides that, those speeches
were not publicly distributed," said Li.
    Hu's second lawyer Li Jinsong said that Hu may have accepted the
prosecutions allegations, to some extent. The prosecution accused the
activists of making statements contrary to China's laws and according to his
lawyers admitted that some of his statements may have been 'excessive'.
    The defence lawyers argued Hu Jia's case on the premise that Chinese
citizens have the right to free speech under China's constitution.
    Chinese officials have shown growing impatience with critics of the
Olympics, arguing that they and Western media dwell on and exaggerate the
country's problems and ignore its remarkable economic and social progress.

    Another Chinese dissident Yang Chunlin, who called for human rights to
take precedence over the Olympic Games, was sentenced to five years in jail on
charges of inciting subversion in late March.