World

China Jails Cyber-Dissident

January 20, 1999 / 11:35 AM EST / AP

A Chinese software entrepreneur accused of subversion for supplying email addresses to dissidents abroad was sentenced Wednesday to two years in prison.

Lin Hai, 30, is the first person convicted in China's effort to crush dissent in cyberspace even as it promotes the Internet for economic and educational use.

Lin was convicted of "inciting the subversion of state power," said a spokesman for the Shanghai Higher Level People's Court, who gave his name as Mr. Zhou. The crime is among China's most serious and is normally used against political dissidents.

In issuing the sentence, the three-judge panel with the Shanghai Intermediate People's Court said Lin deserved to be "punished harshly," according to a copy of the verdict obtained by Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China.

The court also fined Lin $1,200 and ordered "the tools of his crime" confiscated: two desktop computers, one laptop, a modem and telephone, the verdict said.

Lin, who owns a Shanghai software company, was arrested after he gave email addresses of 30,000 Chinese computer users to VIP Reference, a pro-democracy journal published on the Internet by Chinese dissidents in the United States.

China keeps close watch on the Internet. Special task forces have been set up to monitor the system. Service providers are required to register all users with the government and barriers have been installed to try to block sites deemed subversive or pornographic.

Nevertheless, the government has been unable to entirely stop the flow of pro-democracy materials sent into China by technically adept dissidents abroad.

Robin Munro, a longtime observer of human rights in China, said Lin's short sentence could be meant to mute foreign criticism, while charging him with subversion -- the worst offense in Chinese law -- made it clear to Chinese that dissent on the Internet would not be tolerated.

"They achieved their domestic hard-line message, but they also can say to foreign critics, 'See how lenient we were,'" he said by telephone from Hong Kong.

Lin had argued that he had no political motive and gave away the email address in order to develop business contacts, his wife said.

Executives with China's rapidly growing Internet companies were reluctant to speak about a legal case. But an expert at an elite government think tank called the sentence appropriate.

"This was a matter of privacy," said Guo Liang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. He added that as a private businessman, Lin had no right to peddle email address without people's permission.

The publishers of VIP Reference issued a statement before Lin's sentencing calling the prosecution a "landmark case of Internet persecution" and said the government was trying to intimidate its critics.