Beijing - A Chinese court sentenced a former website editor
to six years in prison after convicting him of subversion for posting
online articles that 'amounted to agitation aimed at toppling the
Chinese government,' state media reported Monday.
The Intermediate People's Court in the eastern city of Ningbo
found Zhang Jianhong guilty of posting more than 60 articles online
in which he 'slandered the government and China's social system,' the
official Xinhua News Agency said.
Zhang posted the articles on overseas websites in mid-2006 under
the pseudonym Li Hong after his own website was shut down for
'illegal practices.'
The court treated Zhang, 48, leniently because he had 'showed
remorse' since his arrest in September, the agency said.
A media-rights group last month said China led the world in
technological and judicial controls over online dissent with 52
people in Chinese jails for internet-related offences at the end of
last year.
Despite the huge growth of internet use, the ruling Communist
Party maintains control of the Internet through sophisticated
filtering tools and cooperation with domestic and global
information-technology firms, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders
said in an annual report on media freedom.
Zhang is a dissident writer and poet who belongs to the Chinese
branch of the independent writers association PEN.
He served 18 months in a 're-education through labour' camp after
he was charged with distributing 'counterrevolutionary propaganda'
during the 1989 pro-democracy campaign.
After Zhang's arrest last year, Reporters Without Borders said
China was mounting a new crackdown on pro-democracy and human-rights
activists, including 'harassment, threats and arbitrary arrests.'
Last week, China's top media supervisor said the government
planned tighter control of blogs and webcasts under a new internet
publishing law.
China's internet police already block hundreds of websites that
are deemed politically sensitive and try to keep content broadly in
line with the ruling Communist Party's ideology.
Tens of thousands of small internet cafes have been closed with
the government favouring large chains that can be relied upon to
monitor and control online activity.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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