Jailing of oil investor miscarriage of justice, family says

Accused of leading protests in oilfield dispute, activist will 'fight all the way to Beijing'

The family of Feng Bingxian yesterday rejected the three-year jail term handed to the Shaanxi oilfield investor as a miscarriage of justice and said the activist would appeal against the sentence.

Feng was sentenced by the Intermediate People's Court in Yulin city's Jingbian county on charges of disturbing public order. Two other investors, Feng Xiaoyuan and Wang Shijun, were sentenced to two years in prison, but the terms were suspended for three years.

The 60-year-old Feng was among thousands of private investors who poured billions of yuan into oil wells in the Jingbian area in the late 1990s. Feng alone sank more than 10 million yuan into 13 oil wells.

But in 2003 the local government declared the investments had violated state regulations and started confiscating the oil wells. The investors claimed the government only agreed to compensate them for about a third of their investment.

The investors initially tried to take the local government to court, but failed when the local authorities accused them of organising protests and started arresting their leaders and lawyers. Feng was arrested in July last year.

His son, Feng Yanwei, said the sentence was a miscarriage of justice. 'My father said that he could not accept the verdict and he would fight until the end,' the son said.