The disgraced former Chinese Communist Party chief of a city in northern China was sentenced to life in prison yesterday for his role in one of the bloodiest in a wave of rural riots in recent years, family members of victims said.
A court in Handan in Hebei Province convicted He Feng (
Four co-defendants were sentenced to death for their roles in the attack which left six residents of Shengyou Village dead and dozens injured, two family members of victims said by telephone.
In another protest-related case, eleven farmers in northern China were jailed for up to five-and-a-half years after they stormed a local government office, state media said yesterday.
The farmers were accused of leading up to 200 other people in a storming of local county government and communist party offices in Gansu Province in May last year, Xibu Shangbao reported.
The group on Yongjing county were reportedly enraged over the detention of their legal representative, who authorities said was not licensed.
Several villagers tried to ram farming vehicles against the front door of the county government headquarters. They also reportedly detained an unspecified number of county government and party officials for over 12 hours.
The Yongjing County court sentenced one farmer to five-and-a-half years in jail and another to five years, the newspaper said.
Another nine people were sentenced to between one and two-and-a-half years, it said.
Meanwhile, the editor-in-chief of a Beijing newspaper yesterday denied reports that one of its employees had been fired over an article that was critical of the Chinese government.
Hong Kong's South China Morning Post said Chen Jieren (
China's Cabinet told the Ministry of Civil Affairs, which oversees the Public Interest Times, that the story "negatively affected the image of the Chinese government," according to the Post.
The report followed recent shutdowns and demotions at Beijing newspapers known for tackling issues deemed off-limits by the ruling Communist Party, which has stepped up its controls over media that challenge their authority.
Liu Youping (
"He was sacked because of his work. His section was late every week," Liu said in a telephone interview yesterday.
He said Chen was now working as one of the regular editors at the paper.
A spokesman at the Ministry of Civil Affairs said the ministry was not in charge of personnel issues at the newspaper.
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