CHINA: A chinese court yesterday jailed a US-based dissident for life for "organising and leading a terrorist group", the first time a terrorism charge has been used to convict a democracy activist.
The official Xinhua news agency said Wang Bingzhang (55) had plotted to bomb the Chinese embassy in Thailand's capital, Bangkok, during visits in 2001 and had made preparations to build a terrorist training base in northern Thailand. It also accused him of spying for Taiwan.
The sentence, possibly the heaviest of its kind since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, drew immediate protests from international rights groups.
Wang, who has a doctorate in medical research and had lived in New York since 1982, was convicted by the Intermediate People's Court in the southern boom town of Shenzhen at a one-day trial behind closed doors in January.
Rights activists say he was kidnapped from Vietnam last year by Chinese security agents. It was not immediately clear whether he would appeal.
Xinhua also said Wang had given orders for bombings and assassinations to disrupt China's National Day celebrations on October 1st in 1999. No such incidents were reported that year.
Wang, Xinhua added, wrote and published books and posted articles on websites, "agitating terrorist activities".
Since September 11th, 2001, China has accused Muslim separatists in the north-western region of Xinjiang of terrorist acts in a sometimes violent campaign for independence. The terrorism charge against Wang was the first used to convict a democracy campaigner.
Xinhua also said Wang had gathered intelligence and passed on military secrets to Taiwan, which had supplied him with money between 1982 and 1990.
Wang's family was stunned. "We never imagined the sentence would be this heavy. We're shocked," his sister, Ms Julie Wang (60), said by telephone from San Diego.
"There's no justice in this world," she said. "I've been crying since I learned about it. But I don't dare tell my parents. They're in their 80s and won't be able to live if they hear this news."
In Hong Kong, a dozen human rights activists marched on the office of Beijing's representative. A scuffle broke out when police tried to stop the protesters approaching the building.
"China's imposition of such an abusive sentence shames not only China but those nations that do business as usual with China," said the Washington-based Free China Movement, a coalition of more than 30 Chinese pro-democracy organisations.
Wang slipped into China in January 1998 using a false passport to help establish the China Democracy and Justice Party. He was detained after a nationwide manhunt and expelled the following month to avoid a row with Washington.
Beijing says Wang is a Chinese citizen. Family members say he has renounced his Chinese citizenship and has permanent residency in the United States and should not be tried in China.
Washington is eager to have China, a UN Security Council member, on its side in its efforts to disarm Iraq. It also hopes China can help defuse a crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
The Free China Movement called Wang's trial "trumped up charges that bear no relationship to reality".
It has accused China's security apparatus of kidnapping Wang in Vietnam last year and spiriting him over the border to Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, to stand trial.
Wang and two other exiled dissidents had been missing for months. Xinhua said in December Chinese police had rescued them from kidnappers.
Police found them tied up in a temple in the southern region of Guangxi next to Vietnam on July 3rd, it said.