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Chinese activist Zhu sentenced to two years in jail

A veteran Chinese democracy activist was sentenced to two years in prison following an altercation with police in which both he and his son were allegedly beaten, the man's lawyer said yesterday.

Zhu Yufu (朱虞夫), 54, was sentenced on Tuesday by the Shangcheng District court in Hangzhou on charges of attacking police and interfering in public duties, Mo Shaoping (莫少平) said.

Zhu's son, Zhu Ang (朱昂), was given a suspended one-year sentence on the same charges, Mo said.

"I think the sentence is completely unfair. Zhu Yufu should not be sentenced to jail at all," Mo, who frequently represents political dissidents, said in a telephone interview.

He said he planned to appeal but was still considering a legal strategy.

death

Meanwhile, a human-rights group reported the death of Shanghai housing rights activist Chen Xiaoming (陳小明), who had been sentenced in January to two years in prison on the charge of disrupting a court session.

Chen died on July 1 in Shanghai, hours after his family obtained an emergency medical parole and had him transferred to a hospital, New York-based Human Rights in China said. The group said Chen had a chronic illness which it didn't identify, allegedly worsened by police beatings and denial of drugs and medical care.

Chen's treatment violated both Chinese law and the UN's Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, it said.

Mo said the public prosecutor had surprised the defense by raising Zhu Yufu's previous convictions in court, but not in documents submitted beforehand.

A participant in decades of pro-democracy campaigning, Zhu's most recent prior arrest came in June 1999 following attempts to register a would-be opposition group -- the China Democracy Party.

He was released last year after a seven-year sentence for subversion and vowed to continue exposing official abuses.

travel ban

The doctor who exposed the cover-up of China's SARS outbreak in 2003 has been barred from traveling to the US to collect a human-rights award, a friend of the doctor and a human rights group said this week.

Jiang Yanyong (蔣彥永), a retired surgeon in the People's Liberation Army, was awarded the Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientists Award by the New York Academy of Sciences.

His army-affiliated work unit, Beijing's Hospital 301, denied him permission to travel to the award ceremony in September, Hu Jia (胡佳), a Chinese rights promoter who is a friend of Jiang's, said on Thursday.

The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, which is based in Hong Kong, also issued a statement reporting the rejection of the travel request.

The doctor could not be reached at his home for comment, and a person who answered the phone in the director's office of Hospital 301 said the situation was unclear, declining to provide further details.
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