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'Hero' activist jailed for three years
A Chinese environmental activist, once hailed a hero for protecting China's third-largest lake, has been sentenced to three years in prison for fraud and extortion, but his wife said she was convinced the charges were trumped up.
- Reuters
- Published: 23:04 August 11, 2007
Beijing: A Chinese environmental activist, once hailed a hero for protecting China's third-largest lake, has been sentenced to three years in prison for fraud and extortion, but his wife said she was convinced the charges were trumped up.
Separately, a Chinese court reduced the jail sentence of a dissident by 17 months. He could be paroled before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a rights group said.
A Beijing worker was released after serving 18 years for his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, another group said.
China's human rights record has come under fire from international press and rights watchdogs this month in the run-up to the one-year countdown for the Olympics.
Environment activist Wu Lihong, 39, a candidate in a 2005 national campaign to name 10 people who "moved China" with their service to society, pleaded not guilty to fraud and extortion and will appeal against the verdict meted out by the Yixing People's Court on Friday.
"The court did not summon any witnesses and ignored the defence's argument," his wife Xu Jiehua said.
Commission
Wu was accused of extorting 15,000 yuan (Dh7,277) from a businesswoman, but he argued the money was a commission for selling anti-pollution facilities to factories, his wife said.
Wu was arrested in April after reporting worsening pollution at Taihu lake, which has an area of 2,420 square kilometres and a shoreline of 400 kilometres. It straddles the border of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and is home to more than 60 kinds of fish.
In late May and early June, the lake was covered in a thick foul-smelling canopy of green algae that left tap water undrinkable for more than 2.3 million residents of Wuxi city in Jiangsu province.
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