A co-founder of a would-be Chinese opposition political party was released yesterday after completing a 12-year prison term for endangering state security.
Qin Yongmin (秦永敏) said he was transported to a police station in his home city of Wuhan, Hubei Province, early in the morning. Officers confiscated his prison writings and warned him not to speak to reporters or meet other dissidents before allowing him to return home, Qin told reporters in a telephone interview.
“I tried to tell them it was illegal, but they just stole everything I had written,” Qin said.
Qin was given one of the harshest sentences among the organizers of the China Democracy Party who were charged with endangering state security after seeking to register the group in 1998.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party brooks no opposition and the country’s beleaguered dissidents have been under especially heavy pressure following the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned democracy activist Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波).
Liu’s wife, Liu Xia (劉霞), and many of his colleagues are under a form of undeclared house arrest, a condition that isn’t expected to end until after the Dec. 10 award ceremony in the Norwegian capital of Oslo.
Qin, 57, has a history of political activism dating back three decades and had already spent a number of years in detention.
His punishment underscores the government’s hostility toward political reform, even as the economy continues to develop and Chinese society opens further to outside influences.
Two other co-founders of the China Democracy Party, Wang Youcai (王有才) and Xu Wenli (徐文立), were sentenced to lengthy prison terms but were exiled to the US after a few years of confinement following intense diplomatic pressure from Washington.
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