NYT: Chinese Peasants’ Advocate Sentenced to 51 Months in Jail

[DeepModem Mom]

Chinese Peasants’ Advocate Sentenced to 51 Months in Jail
By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: August 25, 2006


(Associated Press)
Chen Guangcheng, in an undated photograph, tried to stop forced abortions and sterilizations.

BEIJING, Aug. 24 — A Chinese court sentenced an advocate of peasants’ rights to more than four years in prison on Thursday after a trial his lawyers say was a sham.

The rights advocate, Chen Guangcheng, was convicted of destroying property and organizing a mob to block traffic. He earned the enmity of local Communist Party leaders in Shandong Province, in eastern China, when he sought to organize a class-action lawsuit against forced abortions and sterilizations there.

The New China News Agency announced the sentence, four years and three months, in a terse dispatch on its English-language news wire. The information did not appear in Chinese, and other state-run media have been banned from reporting on the matter.

Mr. Chen’s two-hour trial last week and the long sentence announced Thursday appear to reflect a concerted effort by Chinese authorities to punish lawyers and rights advocates, who increasingly in recent years have helped defend people aggrieved about land seizures, environmental abuses, religious persecution and population controls.

The Beijing police last week detained Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer and one of China’s most outspoken dissidents, on suspicion of criminal activity. Mr. Gao’s family has also been put under police guard. His whereabouts and the exact charges against him are unknown....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/world/asia/25china.html

[leftyladyfrommo]

1. I read this in our paper this morning.

I absolutely hate the Chinese govt.

I think we should all boycott everything Chinese in this country.

Their human rights and animal rights records are deplorable.

(Course ours haven't been so good lately either)

[Zorra]

2. The Bu*h administration's highest aspiration is to reshape the US

on the model of Chinese totalitarianism.

Nothing like a mix of good old fashioned tyranny and slave labor to fatten the pocketbooks of the fashionably superwealthy transnational corporate capitalist.

So, how much do we owe China again? Like $50 gazillion?

China is no more of a "socialist" nation than the US is.

China sucks, and if the US lived up to it's principles in the slightest way, it would not allow any trade with this plantation government.