China jails rights activist outspoken on Tibet

A dissident critical of China's Tibet policy was jailed for three-and-a-half years on Thursday, a sentence that is likely to draw more international criticism of the country's political controls ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

The Beijing Number One Intermediate People's Court found human rights activist Hu Jia, 34, guilty of "inciting subversion of state power" for criticising the ruling Communist Party, his lawyers said. Hu had argued he was not guilty.

Starting with advocacy for rural AIDS sufferers, Hu emerged as one of the nation's most vocal advocates of democratic rights, religious freedom and self-determination for Tibet, which has recently been shaken by protests and a security crackdown.

"It's the defence position that citizens have the right to free speech under the constitution and so the prosecution case shouldn't stand," one of his lawyers, Li Fangping, told reporters.

But Hu had also acknowledged to the court that some of his statements had been "excessive", Li said.

"In the end, I think that he came to accept that some of his statements were contrary to the law as it stands," another of his lawyers, Li Jinsong, said. "So to some extent he accepted the prosecution's allegations."

His conviction is likely to become a focus for critics of the Communist Party's strict controls on dissent and protest ahead of the Olympics in August.

WIFE UNDER HOUSE ARREST

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raised Hu's case when in Beijing in February, and the European Union and other Western governments have also pressed China on the case.

Hu was detained by police in late December after spending more than 200 days under house arrest in a Beijing apartment complex called Bobo Freedom City.

His wife, Zeng Jinyan, who has also often criticised the Chinese government, and their infant daughter remain under house arrest there, and their telephone is cut off.

Amnesty International said this week the Beijing Olympics had so far failed to bring the improvement in Chinese citizens' rights that the government said the event would foster. International Olympic Committee inspectors urged China, a frequent censor of the airwaves, to keep the Internet open for the duration of the Games.

Hu kept Internet and telephone contact with dissidents, disgruntled citizens and foreign journalists, and his dispatches on an overseas Chinese-language Web site formed the heart of the prosecution's accusations, one of his lawyers said earlier.

Chinese officials have shown growing impatience with critics of the Olympics, arguing that they and Western media dwell on and exaggerate the country's problems and ignore its remarkable economic and social progress.

Chinese dissident Yang Chunlin, who called for human rights to take precedence over the Olympic Games, was sentenced to five years in jail on charges of inciting subversion in late March.