Jun 24, 2009, 8:13 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.
It said Liu 'confessed to the charge in preliminary police investigation.'
Hundreds of supporters, including international writers, scholars, lawyers and rights advocates, had urged China to release Liu.
He was arrested in early December, two days before the release of 'Charter '08,' in which 303 signatories set out their ideals for transforming China into a liberal democracy and lamented a lack of 'freedom, equality and human rights' under the ruling Communist Party.
The Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) on Wednesday said the government had barred civil rights attorney Mo Shaoping from continuing to represent Liu because Mo had also signed Charter '08.
'We expected that Liu would be formally charged eventually,' CHRD quoted Mo as saying.
'I will fight the decision to bar me from representing Liu in accordance with the law,' he said.
Chinese authorities have kept Liu, 53, under house arrest at a secret location since detaining him in Beijing.
He has been held incommunicado except for two meetings with his wife, Liu Xia, CHRD said.
US-based Human Rights Watch earlier called Liu's arrest 'the most significant Chinese dissident case in a decade.'
Police have reportedly questioned or detained at least 100 other signatories of Charter '08.
China routinely says such human rights cases are handled according to the law and rejects appeals by foreign groups and politicians as attempts to interfere in its legal system.
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 during Soviet rule.
It links its blueprint for change to China's 1989 democracy movement, which the Communist Party quashed with a brutal military crackdown.
'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,' the charter says.
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