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China Dissident Jailed for
11 Years for Accessing 'Reactionary' Material
BEIJING, Aug 5 (AFP) - A Chinese dissident has been
sentenced to 11 years in jail for downloading "reactionary"
material from the Internet, the first such conviction
in the country, his relatives and a Hong Kong-based
rights group said Monday.
Li Dawei, a 40-year-old former police officer from the
northwestern province of Gansu, was given the sentence
at the Tianshui Intermediate People's Court in late
July, his sister told AFP by telephone.
Li was punished for downloading information from the
Internet, making it the first sentence of its kind,
the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy
in Hong Kong said.
Previous instances of online dissent have invariably
involved groups or individuals posting "reactionary
material" on the web, according to the center.
Li, who was arrested in April last year, was condemned
for downloading about 500 "reactionary articles" and
compiling them into 10 volumes, the center said.
Another charge consisted of contacts with "reactionaries"
abroad via e-mail and telephone, it added.
China is seeing an increasing number of dissidents
being arrested and punished for their online
activities, the crackdown coinciding with growing
official sensitivity to the subversive potential of
the Internet.
Authorities have closed down about 14,000 cybercafes
nationwide, 3,100 of them permanently, following
inspections ordered after 25 youths died in a fire in
an Internet cafe in Beijing in June.
Last week, a group of 18 Chinese dissidents and
intellectuals published a "declaration of Internet
users' rights" in protest at new website
self-censorship rules.
The declaration demanded the freedom to put together
Internet pages, with the only restrictions placed on
"evident and real" slander, pornography or certain "violent
attacks or behavior".
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