China Tries Protester Imprisoned 1 1/2 Years

Li Minqi, a Beijing University student arrested for giving an anti-government speech at a protest rally last year, went on trial Friday after already spending 18 months in prison.

The trial is apparently part of a new wave of court proceedings intended to settle various unresolved cases of political prisoners arrested in connection with the Tian An Men Square pro-democracy protests of 1989 and subsequent dissident activities.

Under China’s politicized judicial system, conviction is a foregone conclusion. But at the end of the trial, Li, 22, could be released without further punishment or sentenced to additional prison time.

Although firm figures are not available, at least several hundred people remain imprisoned for their roles in the 1989 protests, with some estimates running into the thousands. Li, however, was arrested not for participating in the 1989 protests but for speaking at a Beijing University rally last year that marked the first anniversary of the bloody crackdown that ended those protests.

In his speech at the unauthorized memorial rally, Li called for direct elections to the National People’s Congress, China’s Parliament, which is now selected through an indirect process tightly controlled by the Communist Party. He also called for land and factories to be turned over to peasants and workers, and for improved treatment of intellectuals.

Li, an economics major, also called China’s rulers “wild and savage autocrats,” according to some reports on his speech, which was delivered to about 200 people at the post-midnight rally. Earlier, students had smashed bottles, sung the socialist anthem “Internationale” and marched around campus.

Breaking bottles is a serious act of political protest because the Chinese word for “small bottle”-- xiaoping --sounds like the given name of senior leader Deng Xiaoping. “Internationale,” which calls on slaves to rise up against their oppressors, had been adroitly turned against the government in 1989 as an anthem of the protest movement.

Li’s arrest on June 15 last year had never been officially acknowledged. But a notice posted Friday outside the Beijing Intermediate Court said he is being tried for “counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement.”

Chinese trials are open only to invited observers. Foreign correspondents are never allowed to attend this type of political trial. Even announcements such as that posted Friday are made only when authorities choose to make their actions public. No details were immediately available about what happened at the start of Li’s trial.

The trial of another student leader, Zhai Weimin, began last week, according to Chinese dissidents who have spoken with foreign correspondents in Beijing.

Other student activists are also expected to go on trial soon, including Peng Rong, 23, a Beijing University biophysics major who was arrested May 25, 1990. He and two other students, Zhou Jian and Li Hai, were accused of putting up an illegal poster shortly before Peng’s arrest that gave results of a poll on student attitudes toward another round of protests.

Peng also addressed a crowd that gathered. No spontaneous political speeches of any sort have been allowed on Beijing campuses since the 1989 crackdown.