Chinese online activists charged with subversion over calls for Jasmine revolution

BEIJING - Three Chinese online activists have reportedly been charged with subversion for re-posting calls for a Jasmine revolution on the Internet.

The arrests are an indication of China’s crackdown on the Middle East style democracy movement after a foreign-based website, boxun.com, issued a call for nationwide demonstrations against one-party rule, The Telegraph reports.

After an anonymous calls for protests in China failed to generate significant interest last weekend, the organisers reiterated their calls this week, urging people to come out against China’s autocratic rulers.

“We invite every participant to stroll, watch or even just pretend to pass by. As long as you are present, the authoritarian government will be shaking with fear,” the open letter posted on the US-based Chinese-language website Boxun.com, which is blocked in China, said.

The Chinese government has reportedly charged the accused under the country’s draconian “subversion of state power” laws, which enables the ruling Communist Party to jail anyone who it thinks could be a challenge to its right to rule.

According to a statement by the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, the lawyer of Liang Haiyi, one of the accused, has said that the unemployed 35-year-old woman has been arrested for putting information about the protests on a Chinese chat rooms. The lawyer also said that the woman’s ex-husband had also received an official notice saying she has been charged with subversion.

“I don’t think she’s broken any law, she only reposted someone else’s writings on the Chinese internet and it wasn’t her own writing. Anyone overseas can see these materials,” Liang Xiaojun said.

The other two netizens arrested for spreading word of the planned protest online were Hua Chunhui, from Wuxi city in eastern China, and Chen Wei from Suining city in the southwest, the group said in its statement.

Human Rights in China, an advocacy group based in New York, listed 29 lawyers and dissidents who had been detained, confined, searched or questioned by police or government agents since the Jasmine protest calls first appeared.

Liu Xiaobo, the dissident who won this year’s Nobel peace prize is currently serving an 11-year sentence after being convicted on subversion charges. (ANI)