CHINA: A blind Chinese human rights lawyer, who exposed a violent campaign of forced abortions and sterilisations by family planning officials, has been jailed for four years and three months.
His supporters claim the charges, of damaging property and organising a mob to disrupt traffic during a protest, were trumped up.
Chen Guangcheng (35), went on trial in Yinan county court last Friday after a year of detention and his lawyers said they were stopped from attending the trial. Two lawyers were appointed instead who did nothing to defend him, they said.
Mr Chen's supporters say he was on trial for last year publishing a report exposing the plight of women in his home town in eastern Shandong province. Both domestic and foreign civil rights campaigners have repeatedly called for Mr Chen's release and for an investigation into claims that he was tortured in custody.
According to the official version from the Xinhua news agency yesterday, Mr Chen was convicted of damaging property and "organising a mob to disturb traffic".
Citing a court document, Xinhua said Mr Chen was "upset with workers who were sent to carry out poverty-relief programmes" in his village.
When it came out last year, the activist's report revealed that family planning officials in Linyi were coercing people into having late-term abortions, forcing people to have sterilisations and using other violent methods to meet quotas under the "one-child policy".
The central government launched an investigation and some officials were punished.
The report brought international profile for the activist, who went blind as a child and was not allowed to graduate because of his disability. His knowledge of the law is self-taught.
The publicity also made the "blind, barefoot lawyer" a marked man as far as the local powers-that-be were concerned. He was picked up last August and he and his family were beaten, threatened and confined to their house by thugs hired by the local government, said his wife Yuan Weijing.