New York: The jailing of China's leading human rights activist, Hu Jia, reflects a further hardening of Beijing's stance towards dissent in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, an international human rights watchdog has said.
The watchdog in its recent statement strongly urged the international community and particularly Beijing based diplomats to insist with the Chinese authorities to end harassment of Hu and his wife Zeng.
Hu, 34, was sentenced to three and half years in prison and one additional year of deprivation of political rights for "incitement to subvert state power," a charge generally leveled against critics and dissidents.
Stating that China's subversion laws effectively criminalise criticisms of the party and the government, Human Rights Watch said Hu's arrest was politically motivated and that his trial had not met minimum standards of fairness and due process.
Hu's lawyers indicated that they had pleaded not guilty and that they intended to appeal the sentence, it said. "Hu Jia's sentence shows that you can't defend human rights in China without becoming a case yourself," said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "His arrest was unjustified, his trial unfair, and his sentence unwarranted."
Human Rights Watch said the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) failure to raise Hu Jia's case with the Chinese government is at odds with the letter and the spirit of the Olympic Charter.
Hein Verbruggen, chairman of the IOC coordination commission, did not mention Hu Jia's sentence at a Beijing press conference yesterday, but did note that IOC can prove that bringing the Games to Beijing has led to improvements.
"If the Chinese government had betrayed its commitments to the IOC on infrastructure, logistics, or air quality for the Games, you can bet we would hear about it," said Richardson.
