Dissident Gets 2-Year Sentence for Contacting Rights Groups

One of China’s few active dissidents has been sentenced to two years in a labor camp, a human rights group said Saturday.

Authorities told Shen Liangqing’s mother that he was being punished for contacting foreign human rights groups and reporters, a Hong Kong human rights monitoring group said.

Shen, 35, was detained during a February roundup of people who had petitioned the Chinese legislature before its annual session. Though the National People’s Congress has little power and rarely does more than endorse Communist Party decisions, its annual session is a popular target for petitions demanding change.

Authorities told Shen’s family that his offenses included contacting the New York-based group Human Rights in China and the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China.

The center said this was the first time that a Hong Kong group had been declared a “hostile organization” by Beijing.

“The intention is to scare people so that they do not dare to contact us,” spokesman Lu Siqing said.

The Hong Kong group has become a clearinghouse for information about dissidents in China.

“From now on, it would be very difficult for the group to operate,” Lu said in Hong Kong.

Also Saturday, police released another active dissident, Xu Wenli, after detaining him for 24 hours and seizing a computer and other materials from his Beijing home. Xu refused to say what police asked him about.