His real crime was to organise a meeting of the China Democracy Party. Even though under Chinese law it is possible to organise political parties other than the Communist Party, members of the China Democracy Party have been arrested and persecuted since 1998. Meanwhile another dissident, Liu Xiaobo, remains in prison without charges.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – The Changsha Municipal Intermediate Court (Hunan) yesterday sentenced Xie Changfa, a Chinese dissident who tried to organise a national meeting of the banned China Democracy Party (CDP), to 13 years in prison.

Xie Changfa’s brother, Xie Changzhen, who was present at the trial, said that the dissident was handcuffed throughout the proceedings and was not allowed to speak in his own defence.

Xie’s lawyer, Ma Gangquan, who has announced that he would appeal the sentence, noted that setting up a political party in China is guaranteed by China’s constitution.

In fact China does have a small number of officially recognised parties, although they serve more as advisers than competitors to the ruling Communist Party.

By contrast, founded by dissidents in mid-1998, the China Democracy Party was quashed by the Communist Party six months after coming into existence. Dozens of founding members were arrested and sentenced up to 13 years in prison, mostly on charges of subverting state power.

Hunan police detained Xie in June last year, right before the Beijing Olympics. At that time the authorities were rounding up the country’s most prominent dissidents to avoid possible protests, putting them in prison or sending away from cities with Olympic venues.

Xie has already served three years in a re-education-through-labour (concentration) camp for a series of speeches denouncing the 4 June 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

According to Human Rights in China, his sentence is one of the harshest imposed in recent years. It confirms that Beijing is bent on conducting a harsh and systematic crackdown on pro-rights activists and dissidents ahead of celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October.

The Hong Kong-based rights advocacy group Chinese Human Rights Defenders has complained that Liu Xiaobo is still in prison. He is a signatory to Charter 08, a document that calls for greater democracy in China and urges the Chinese government to show more respect for people’s rights.

Taken into police custody on 8 December last year, he was formally arrested only in June of this year but has not yet been charged.

Liu's lawyers, who met with him on Monday, were told that the investigation into his case would continue until at least 23 September.

• china
• dissidents
• activists
• rights
• xie
• changfa
• xie
• changzhen
• ma
• gangquan
• trial
• china
• democracy
• party