Activist jailed 18 months for June 4 protest bid

A Jiangsu court has sentenced a man to 18 months in jail for applying to hold a protest on the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, his lawyer said.

Gu Yimin was found guilty of "inciting state subversion" for posting pictures of the 1989 crackdown online and applying for permission to stage a protest on its anniversary last year, his lawyer Liu Weiguo said.

"This judgment violates the constitution," Liu said, adding that Gu, 36, would appeal against the verdict handed down by a court in Changshu . "We maintain that Gu Yimin was exercising his right to freedom of speech."

Liu said that men he believed to be state security officers had attacked him and another lawyer outside the courthouse.

Hundreds of protesters - by some estimates, thousands - were killed in 1989 when the People's Liberation Army cracked down on the student democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the symbolic heart of the state.

The governing Communist Party tightly censors public discussion of the crackdown.

Gu applied to the local authorities to hold a small-scale protest on June 4 last year, the 24th anniversary of the event, his wife Xu Yan had said previously.