Yao Zhenxiang, 37, said to be a financier of the Shanghai dissident movement, was sentenced to three years of RTL in early August 1996. He was apprehended with his younger brother in Shanghai on 26 April 1996 and accused of "duplicating and broadcasting pornographic videotapes," reportedly a fabrication. According to family members, he was badly beaten by officers of the Shanghai PSB prior his transfer to the Dafeng Labor Farm in Jiangsu Province. Yao Zhenxiang participated in Shanghai's "democracy salons" held in a park in 1992-93. Yao Zhenxiang joined the Shanghai Human Rights Association at its founding in 1993. In March 1994 he signed the "Blueprint for Democratization of the State and Society", a nineteen-point petition submitted to the NPC which called for a multi-party system, freedom of the press, independent labor unions, an official reevaluation of the 1989 movement, reform of the penal system and abolition of the crime of counterrevolution and of RTL. Shortly thereafter, Yao Zhenxiang fled to Hong

Kong and received political asylum in France. He returned voluntarily to Shanghai in February 1996 after he was officially promised that he would not be persecuted. Yao's younger brother, Yao Zhenxian, was apprehended at the same time in August 1996, sentenced to a two-year RTL term for the same alleged offense and held in the same camp. The Yao brothers have been refused permission to exercise their legal right to file a lawsuit challenging their RTL term. A third Yao brother has travelled to Beijing to file a lawsuit against the RTL Commission on his brothers' behalf. (Sources: Human Rights in China - New York)