Chinese Pair Who Spoke of Dissidents Get 3-Year Sentence
China has sentenced a rock singer and a businessman to three years in a labor camp for telling international groups about the detention of four dissident poets, a Hong Kong human rights group said Tuesday.
Rock singer Wu Ruojie and businessman Li Xi received the sentences in Guiyang, capital of China’s southwestern Guizhou province, the Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said.
In January, Chinese security authorities in Guiyang detained four liberal poets, Ma Zhe, Wu Ruohai, Xiong Jinren and Ma Qiang, for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government. Wu Ruojie is a younger brother of Wu Ruohai.
In another development, Beijing police had put dissident Zhang Jincheng in a labor camp without trial, the human rights group said, but he escaped Friday.
Zhang was detained April 14 after visiting Xu Wenli, a leading figure of the 1978-79 Democracy Wall movement, and prominent dissident Wei Jingsheng’s brother.
He was beaten by police before being sent to the “illegal” labor camp on the outskirts of Beijing.
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