The People's Republic of China is certainly no place for people to live, at least not if they yearn for basic human rights and freedoms:
A Chinese Internet writer was jailed for 12 years on Tuesday for "subversion of state power" after backing a movement by exiled dissidents to hold free elections, his lawyer said.
Yang Tianshui, 45, who has been in custody since last December, did not plan to appeal, a protest against a trial he felt was illegal, his lawyer, Li Jianqiang, said. Yang is one of several Internet writers and journalists being tried this month, amid what analysts say is a tightening of controls on media and freedom of expression.
Yang was charged after posting essays on the Internet in support of the "Velvet Action of China", a movement named for the "Velvet Revolution" that peacefully overthrew communist rule in the former Czechoslovakia.
He previously served 10 years on "counter-revolution" charges for condemning the military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators on Tiananmen Square, the Committee to Protect Journalists said. He was released in 2000.
The tough sentence comes a day after the lawyer for New York Times researcher Zhao Yan said the case against him had been revived, dashing hopes for his imminent release. He has been held since September 2004.
Of course, the People's Republic is a communist state, and despite the gushings of apologists like Noam Chomsky and others on the left, communists take a very attenuated view of things like human dignity and individual liberty. Communist political philosophy expresses little concern for such trifles. They do make up for the lack, though, in their fondness for cruelty.
