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Alert

Second "web dissident" arrested and accused of "subversion"

(RSF/IFEX) - In a 7 June 2000 letter to Chinese Justice Minister Gao Changli, RSF protested the arrest of Huang Qi, editor of a web site on human rights in China. Accused of "subversion" by the authorities, he faces a ten-year jail sentence. Robert Ménard, the organisation's secretary-general, reminded the minister that in a document dated 18 January, the United Nations' special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of freedom of opinion and freedom of speech had emphasised that "detention as punishment for the expression of a peaceful opinion is a serious violation of human rights". On 30 May the trial of another web dissident accused of "subversion" began. He faces a five-year sentence (see IFEX alert of 5 June 2000). In August 1999, RSF denounced China as one of the twenty enemies of the Internet (see IFEX alert of 9 August 2000).


According to the information collected by RSF, Huang Qi and his wife were arrested by police on 3 June at their home in Chengdu (Sichaun province, in the south-west of the country). She was released three days later. Huang Qi is still being held and has been accused of "subversion". The authorities accuse him of publishing articles on his web site (www.6-4tianwang.com) which denounce the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989. On the eleventh anniversary of the killing of students in Tiananmen Square by the Chinese army, www.6-4tianwang.com published a dozen articles and documents about the massacre, which was described as an "anti-revolutionary incident" by the Chinese Communist Party.