A Chinese court sentenced a leading dissident to 13 years in prison Monday for subversion, sending a powerful signal to China and the world that anyone who criticizes Communist Party rule will be dealt with harshly.
Xu Wenli, 55, had emerged over the last year as one of the leading activists in a revived dissident movement that had been encouraged by signs of growing tolerance on the part of the government and also by China’s warming ties with the United States. Xu had openly called for democratic reforms and also had taken part in efforts to form an opposition party, the China Democracy Party,
The sentence was delivered after a three-hour trial Monday morning that was closed to the public. Police threw a security cordon around the court, preventing anyone from approaching.
As Xu began a prison sentence that will not see him released until 2011, another dissident freed on medical parole Sunday arrived in the U.S.
Liu Nianchun, 50, arrived in New York Sunday with his wife and daughter, where they will begin a new life in exile. Liu, a former labor rights campaigner, had been sentenced in 1995 to serve in a labor camp for drafting a petition demanding a review of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
The Chinese judiciary authorities said Liu had been released on medical parole and was being sent to the U.S. for treatment. But human-rights groups pointed out that his release was conditioned upon his exile, a tactic that ensures government opponents are in no position to challenge the Communist Party after they are freed.
The timing of the release was designed to divert international attention from the renewed clampdown against government opponents, said the New York based Human Rights in China.
Two other leading organizers of the China Democracy Party, Wang Youcai and Qin Yongmin, were tried on similar charges last week as China steps up a campaign to stamp out the fledgling democracy movement. They have not yet been sentenced.
Liu’s release came two days after a speech from President Jiang Zemin in which he made it clear that the Communist Party was prepared to tolerate no opposition to its rule.
Xu, Wang and Qin were among the most prominent campaigners of a revived dissident movement that had been pestering the government for reforms and also seeking to establish China’s first opposition party.
Dozens have been detained and human-rights groups say at least nine party members are still in custody since the nationwide crackdown intensified last month.
Unlike Wang and Qin, who were tried separately in their respective hometowns of Hangzhou and Wuhan, Xu has been given a court-appointed defense lawyer. But Xu’s family was only informed Friday that he would be tried Monday, giving the lawyer little time to prepare the case, the family complained.
A veteran of dissent as well as prison, Xu, 55, first began speaking out against the government during the Democracy Wall movement of 1978-79, a period that saw a sudden flowering of free discussion of issues such as democracy encouraged by the ascension of the seemingly liberal Deng Xiaoping to the top of the party hierarchy.
But in 1979 Deng clamped down, sending to prison those who had taken advantage of the relaxation to call for democratic reforms. Xu served a 12-year prison sentence, and his release, in 1991, came in the wake of the crackdown against the Tiananmen Square student democracy protest movement.
For several years, Xu remained silent, discouraged by the harsh climate of the mid-1990s during which several freed dissidents were sent back to prison for daring to speak out again . But late last year, encouraged by the release into exile of fellow Democracy Wall campaigner Wei Jingsheng, Xu emerged again to campaign for reforms.
Liu, also a Democracy Wall activist who served three years in prison at that time, was detained again on many occasions before finally being arrested again in 1995. Over a year later, he was sentenced without trial to three years in a labor camp for drafting a pro-democracy petition calling for “a spirit of tolerance in China’s political life.” In May 1997, his sentence was extended by 216 days because he had “refused to reform.”
