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One learns of dissidents being jailed in China for long terms.10-year prison term for China activist
Beijing, March 25 (AP): A longtime Chinese democracy activist was sentenced today to a heavy penalty of 10 years in prison for advocating government change in online articles that authorities say slandered Communist Party leadership as autocratic.
The trial came amid a vast crackdown on activism in China that may reflect government anxiety about unrest inspired by uprisings in West Asia and North Africa. Dozens of well-known Chinese lawyers and activists have vanished, been interrogated, held under house arrest or criminally detained for alleged subversion.
Activist Liu Xianbin, who has previously spent a decade in prison, was found guilty of inciting subversion of state power by the Suining Intermediate People's Court in Sichuan province after a trial that lasted a few hours, his wife Chen Mingxian told The Associated Press.
Liu's sentence is among the heaviest handed down for inciting subversion, an offence stipulated in Chinese criminal law as punishable by up to five years, or in serious cases, more than five years.
Chen, who attended the trial, said her husband was calm and composed and looked relatively well, but that the judge frequently interrupted Liu and his lawyer's attempts to present a defence. Chen said that after the verdict was delivered, Liu shouted, apparently in frustration: "I'm innocent! I protest!"
"The 10-year sentence to me, because we've already been through 10 years ... (is) a repeat of the painful process, one in which I can only watch and wait anxiously," said Chen, who is a schoolteacher. The couple have a 13-year-old daughter. China's authoritarian government routinely uses the vaguely worded subversion charge to jail activists it considers troublemakers.
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This is not unusual.
However, what exactly are their crimes?
Are they advocating violent overthrow of the Communist Govt? If so, that naturally would not be acceptable.
Would calling a govt 'autocratic' be wrong? And what if it is 'autocratic' so what?
Or does it go against the projection of the Govt that it is a very benign, benevolent and very caring govt. Every govt in the world claims to be doing much for its people when in actuality it does not. What's so new about it that should spook the Chinese Communist Govt?
What exactly is the Chinese Communist Govt afraid of?
If Chinese rules were applied in India, then I presume more than 3/4th of India's population would have been in jail.
But then without such rules that restricts dissensions, grousing, bellyaching and a form of slavery, there would be no progress.
It must always be remembered that most of the Wonders of the World like the Pyramids and so on, would not have been such marvels, but for slave labour!
And there is no doubt, that the progress of China from a poverty stricken, impoverished nation of lazy opium addicts, its spiralling to these great heights is but another marvel of the world.