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A mainland court has sentenced
dissident writer Chen Wei to nine
years in jail for publishing
pro-democracy essays online.
Mr Chen's lawyer, Zheng
Jianwei, said the court in
Sichuan province found Mr
Chen guilty of "inciting
subversion of state power,"
following a brief hearing.
"Chen said in court, 'I'm not
guilty'," said Mr Zheng. Mr
Chen declared after the
verdict was announced,
"Dictatorship will fail,
constitutional democracy will
prevail", said Mr Zheng.
Mr Chen's wife, Wang, said the
court's guilty verdict cited
nine essays that he had
published on overseas Chinese
websites.
"They downloaded all his essays from overseas, and you
can't read any of them on
websites inside China," she
said. "But they still said that the essays had an extremely malign
impact inside China, even
though most people in China
can't read them."
Mr Chen, 42, was one of
hundreds of dissidents, rights
activists and protest
organisers swept up in a
crackdown on dissent this
year, when the Communist Party sought to prevent potential protests inspired by uprisings across the Arab world.
Liang Xiaojun, the second lawyer who represented Chen at the trial, said the hearing lasted two and a half hours. "He said he's not
guilty, he didn't mean to
overthrow the political regime
and that he wanted to pursue
constitutional democracy through non-violent means," Mr
Liang said.
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