[China] ...jails journalist for online reports on poverty

from The Scotsman

China sentenced a newspaper reporter, Li Yuanlong, to two years in jail yesterday, adding to its list of writers imprisoned for expressing themselves through the country's expanding but tightly censored internet.

Li, who worked on the Bijie daily in the south-western province of Guizhou, was detained in September and charged in February with issuing essays that "fabricated, distorted and exaggerated facts, incited subversion of the state and [sought] to overthrow the socialist system".

"I feel it's very unjust," Li's wife, Yang Xiumin, said of the prison term. "To give such a heavy sentence just for a few essays isn't rule of law. It's not justice."

Li's essays, on unemployment and rural poverty, were sent to US-based Chinese-language news portals considered hostile by Beijing and blocked to most Chinese users.