A mainland political activist who had already spent nearly a decade in prison was jailed for another 10 years yesterday for writing articles urging democratic reform, an unusually harsh sentence that rights groups say shows the authorities are intent on silencing their critics.
Liu Xianbin, who was convicted of 'inciting subversion of state power' by the Suining Intermediate People's Court in Sichuan, was also deprived of his political rights for two years and four months, his wife Chen Mingxian said, meaning he will be prohibited from voting, accepting interviews, making speeches or publishing when he is released.
The court accused Liu of slandering the government and 'inciting the overthrow of the Communist Party's rule', Chen said, insisting her husband was innocent.
'I find it hard to accept this, but I have no choice,' Chen said. 'We can see the reality of China's legal environment through this sentencing.'
Liu, 42, a founding member of the China Democracy Party, was convicted of subversion of state power in 1999 and was released from jail in November 2008. Nineteen months later he was re-arrested on the charge of 'inciting subversion' over his online essays, including one that said street protests were an inevitable stage of democratisation.
'Street protests are key to democratic movements, it is an inevitable stage of a society's democratisation,' he wrote in February last year.