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China frees dissident

BEIJING, March 4 (UPI) -- China has released Wang Youcai, a jailed dissident and founder of the banned China Democracy Party, ahead of a scheduled U.N. human rights meeting.

Wang, 37, was sentenced to 11 years in jail in 1998, after attempting to register an independent opposition party critical of the leading Communist Party. The Dui Hua Foundation said he was released Thursday morning and is headed for San Francisco where he will receive medical treatment, the BBC reported.

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Wang was on a list of jailed dissidents named in the U.S. State Department's report on human rights in China, released last week. Another dissident on the list, Tibetan nun Phuntsog Nyidrol, was released on March 26, one day after the report was issued. Jailed since 1989, she was the longest serving female political prisoner in China.

The sentence of a third prisoner named in the U.S. report, Uighur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer, was reduced by one year this week. She is serving an 8-year term for violating national security.

The United States has threatened to sponsor a resolution criticizing China's human rights record at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights meeting, which opens March 15 in Geneva.

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