The New York Times

Friday, June 11, 1999

China Is Sentencing Dissidents to Jail Terms of Up to 4 Years

By ERIK ECKHOLM

BEIJING -- A businessman and former government planner who distributed a pro-democracy manifesto last year was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison, the latest in a series of harsh steps taken against dissidents in the last month.

The former official, Fang Jue, 44, was convicted here of illegal business activities, on charges that he and his relatives insisted were trumped up. He has been jailed since July.

Months before then, he had distributed to foreign journalists a long paper that called for political change that he said reflected the secret thinking of many younger Communist Party members.

Fang was not allowed to speak at a brief hearing but shouted, "This trial was illegal!" before being led out, his sister Liu Jing told The Associated Press.

Tuesday, a factory worker who founded the Hebei Province branch of the outlawed China Democracy Party, Yu Feng, 37, was arrested on suspicion of "subverting state power," according to the Information Center for Human Rights and Democratic Movement, based in Hong Kong. That is a serious charge that was used last year to give out long sentences to the most prominent party leaders.

In the last month, three other democracy advocates have received prison terms ranging from three to four years on similar charges.

In late May. a democratic party member from the southern province of Guangxi, Li Zhiyou, was sentenced to three years. He was arrested in December after he having tried to protest the 11-year sentence given to a party founder.

On May 11, Liu Lixian of Beijing received a four-year sentence for subversion. He had tried to publish a book of the writings of two leading dissidents and democratic party leaders, Xu Wenli and Qin Yongmin, who themselves were given sentences of 13 and 12 years in the fall.

On May 27, Zhang Youju, a democratic party member in the central province of Hebei, was sentenced to four years. He was arrested last fall after having posted fliers that called for the government to reassess its violent suppression of the democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

An additional three democratic party members in the northern province of Gansu were tried on subversion charges May 28 and are awaiting sentences, and other activists around the country are in detention and awaiting possible charges.