Jun 24, 2009, 4:46 GMT
Beijing - China has charged dissident writer Liu Xiaobo with subversion, the government said on Wednesday, in a move apparently linked to Liu's organization of a charter for democratic reform.
'Liu has been engaged in agitation activities, such as spreading of rumours and defaming of the government, aimed at subversion of the state and overthrowing the socialism system in recent years,' the official Xinhua news agency quoted a police statement as saying.
Liu, who was arrested last November, had 'confessed to the charge in preliminary police investigation,' the agency said.
Hundreds of supporters, including leading international writers, scholars, lawyers and rights advocates, had urged China to release Liu.
He was arrested two days before the release of 'Charter '08,' in which 303 signatories set out their ideals for transforming China into a liberal democracy and lament a lack of 'freedom, equality and human rights' under the ruling Communist Party.
'By departing from universal values and a basic political framework, 'modernization' has been a disastrous process that has stripped people of their rights, corrupted normal human feelings and destroyed people's dignity,' they said.
Charter '08 demands sweeping changes to create a 'free, democratic and constitutional state,' and urges the release of all political prisoners.
It is modelled on the Charter '77 written by intellectuals in the former Czechoslovakia.
It links its blueprint for change to China's 1989 democracy movement, which the party quashed with a brutal military crackdown.
Apart from arresting Liu, 53, police have reportedly questioned or detained at least 30 other signatories of Charter '08.
US-based Human Rights Watch earlier called Liu's arrest 'the most significant Chinese dissident case in a decade.'
China routinely says all such human rights cases are handled 'according to the law' and rejects as 'interference' any appeals by foreign groups and politicians.
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