Dissident Hu Jia Is Released From Jail

By Michael Wines

BEIJING — Hu Jia, one of China’s most prominent social activists and a leading political dissident, was released from prison on Sunday after completing a 42-month sentence for state subversion,  his wife, Zeng Jinyan, was quoted as telling wire services.

Mr. Hu, 37, was detained in December 2007, shortly after testifying on China’s human-rights situation before a European Parliament committee, and was sentenced to prison in early 2008. 

The authorities had rejected repeated requests by Ms. Zeng that he be released early on medical grounds because a hepatitis-B infection left him with a serious case of cirrhosis. Ms. Zeng, who is also a political activist and blogger, was herself subjected to harassment during her husband’s confinement, and said in an interview this month that the authorities were trying to force her and her 3-year-old daughter from their apartment in Shenzhen.

On Sunday, Ms. Zeng told Reuters that she did not know when Mr. Hu might be able to speak publicly. “At the moment, I want everything to be peaceful,” she was quoted as saying. “I’m worried that doing interviews at this stage might cause problems. Please understand.”

Mr. Hu’s mother, Feng Juan, said he was in “so-so” health but in good spirits, the news service reported.

His release comes just days after the Chinese authorities released another prominent dissident, the artist Ai Weiwei, from secret confinement. Mr. Ai, a critic of the Chinese system, had been seized on April 3 and held incommunicado. Officials said later that he would be charged with tax evasion.

Mr. Hu’s 2007 detention proved a harbinger of what has become an increasingly draconian response to social and political protest by China’s Communist Party and its security establishment. The authorities began rounding up activists in advance of Beijing’s August 2008 Olympic games, apparently to head off any negative publicity during the event, then stepped up  their activities in December 2008, after scores of dissidents and intellectuals released a manifesto titled Charter 08 calling for democratic reforms.

A principal author of that document, the writer Liu Xiaobo, was arrested then and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last October.

The crackdown has sharply intensified this year in the wake of democratic revolutions in the Middle East and Northern Africa, which sparked an anonymous call on the Internet for a so-called Jasmine Revolution in China.

Mr. Hu was regarded as a potential Nobel winner and the nation’s leading political activist when he was detained in 2007. He became known early on as an environmental crusader, advocate for sufferers of AIDS and vocal critic of state actions against the downtrodden. He was an early user of blogs to spread his message, a method of protest that has become both ubiquitous and difficult for Chinese authorities to control.

The accusation that he had subverted state power was based in part on a caustic essay posted on his blog in which he detailed the torture of two people who protested the illegal seizure of their Beijing home. That essay broadly criticized the Communist Party’s human rights record.

“Hu spread malicious rumors and committed libel in an attempt to subvert the state’s political power and socialist system,” stated the April 2008 court verdict against him, as quoted by the state-run Xinhua news service.

The European Parliament awarded Mr. Hu the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, Europe’s highest honor for human rights work, in October 2008, on the eve of the arrival of a delegation of Beijing government leaders for a summit meeting.

NYT