Chinese Student Sentenced to 9 Years for Protest Role

BEIJING â€”  A student charged with spreading rumors to the Voice of America during spring pro-democracy protests has been given a nine-year prison term, a state newspaper reported today. It was the first announced sentencing of a student participant since the government’s June crackdown.

The China Youth News said Zhang Weiping, 25, was sentenced Saturday by the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court for spreading counterrevolutionary propaganda and instigating criminal acts.

Zhang, a fourth-year student at Zhejiang Fine Arts Institute in the eastern city of Hangzhou, admitted some of the charges against him but would not acknowledge that his acts were counterrevolutionary, the daily said.

The court said that on June 6, two days after the bloody military crackdown of the student movement in Beijing, Zhang called the U.S.-funded Voice of America and falsely reported that students in Hangzhou forced local authorities to fly the Chinese flag at half-staff to mourn victims of the Beijing massacre.

‘Bad Political Influence’

It said that Zhang sent a tape of the VOA broadcast of his report to his university and that “it created a very bad political influence.�

The court also accused Zhang of drawing eight cartoons vilifying Communist Party and government leaders.

The newspaper did not say when Zhang was convicted, but conviction and sentencing often happen at the same time. It also did not say under what clause of the criminal code he was tried or what the maximum sentence was.

One clause covering counterrevolutionaries who incite the masses says those found guilty of serious cases shall not serve terms of less than five years. A counterrevolutionary can get a life term if the offense is deemed serious enough.

Chinese police have arrested thousands of workers and students who took part in the pro-democracy movement and have publicly sentenced dozens of workers to long prison terms for rioting and causing social disturbances.