Jailings for endangering state security up 20pc
The number of people convicted of endangering state security and sentenced to more than five years' prison jumped 20 per cent last year, according to the first annual report issued to the public by the Supreme People's Court.
The significant jump reflected the authorities' toughened crackdown against not only such serious offenders, but also dissidents on the whole, human rights observers said.
'The figure is not surprising, given the number of sensitive events and incidents' in the past 2 1/2years, said Joshua Rosenzweig, senior research manager of the Hong Kong-based Dui Hua Foundation.
To name a few: the Tibet riots in March 2008 and the Xinjiang riots in July last year; as well as the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen student protests, the Beijing Olympics and the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.
'It also confirms what we see in individual cases - the suggestion of Chinese authorities taking a much harder line against critics,' Rosenzweig said.
Endangering state security is a blanket charge that includes everything from espionage, inciting subversion of state power to leaking state secrets, with five years being the average sentence.
Some arrests made after the riots in Tibet would probably have been tried last year, as well as arrests made after the riots in Xinjiang. But Liu Xiaobo, drafter of Charter 08, stands out from all those convicted last year under this charge: he was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment for inciting subversion.
The report did not provide an actual number of offenders, just a percentage for the increase in number.
The Supreme People's Court makes an annual report to the National People's Congress every March, but the court's spokesman said yesterday that from this year there would be an extra annual report every year in the form of a white paper, which would 'particularise and expand' on the March report to the legislature.
