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Alert

Cyber-dissident sentenced to 12 years in prison; website closed

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has condemned a 12-year jail sentence against a cyber-dissident and protested against the closure of a website carrying political polls.

The organisation regretted that "China was marking the 40th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution by censoring the Internet and cracking down on democrats", pointing to a 12-year jail term against a cyber-dissident and closure of a pollster website.

Yang Tianshui was sentenced on 16 May 2006 to 12 years in prison for posting anti-government articles online. Elsewhere a website, Polls, carrying out and posting political surveys, was closed the previous week after asking visitors to the site to reply to a question about the June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Reporters Without Borders said it believed the prison sentence imposed on Yang Tianshui was totally unjustified. "We consider that the arrest and trial of the cyber-dissident did not respect Chinese law. Yang was picked up without an arrest warrant by Security Bureau agents in plainclothes and his trial was rushed through in three hours," the organisation said.

Yang Tianshui has posted numerous articles, including on the Chinese version of the daily "Epoch Times", hosted abroad. He had, for example, reported on torture meted out to human rights activists and protection the authorities give to some criminals. Also known under the name Yang Tongyan, the cyber-dissident had already served a ten-year prison sentence between 1990 and 2000 for "counter-revolutionary" crimes.

He was arrested again on 24 December 2004 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province in the south-east of the country. He was held in custody for several weeks without being allowed to contact his family.

The press freedom organisation also condemned the closure of Polls ( Zhongguo guoqing zixun - http://www.s007s.com ), saying that the authorities had broken their own laws in closing the site, which did no more than report on public opinion on political issues.

Polls is a website that is properly registered and therefore completely legal. The poll which provoked its closure was based on the recent announcement of a compensation award paid to the family of a student killed during the Tiananmen massacres.

Visitors to the site were asked to respond to the question: "The family of a Tiananmen victim has been compensated for the first time. What do you think about it?" Two possible answers were suggested. "It's an ordinary compensation, nothing very interesting about it" or "A first step towards the rehabilitation of Chinese history. An unprecedented case!".