China Sentences Dissident to 7 Years in Prison
A Chinese court has sentenced student leader-turned-dissident Guo Haifeng to seven years in prison for hooliganism, a Hong Kong-based human rights group said Saturday.
He was jailed after police paraded him before a rally at a stadium in Henan province about two weeks ago, the Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said, quoting Guo’s girlfriend, Wang Yanping.
The police had initially accused Guo, a former Beijing University student, of fraud, but the prosecutor declined to charge him on that count, the group said.
His girlfriend was quoted as saying she had no idea why police had accused Guo of hooliganism. The group gave no further details.
A Hong Kong newspaper reported in August that Guo had been detained on suspicion of helping Liu Gang, a fellow leader of the 1989 Beijing student demonstrations that the military brutally crushed, flee to the United States in April.
Guo himself served about two years of a four-year sentence imposed on him in 1991 for counter-revolutionary sabotage during the repression of the 1989 demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. He was released on parole in February 1993.
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