China jails quake activist

BEIJING, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- A Chinese activist, who probed construction of earthquake-flattened schools, got a five-year sentence arising from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Tan Zuoren was sentenced Tuesday for "incitement to subversion" by a court in Chengdu in the quake-hit province for a document he wrote after the 1989 Beijing protests. But his supporters said Tan was charged only last July after raising questions about poorly constructed schools that collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, killing thousands of children. A total of more than 80,000 thousand people died in the quake in the southwestern province.

Tan also had angered provincial authorities by opposing a planned petrochemical plant on environmental grounds, The Christian Science Monitor reported online.

"The real reasons are the plant and the 'tofu buildings'" that collapsed in the earthquake, the Monitor quoted lawyer Xia Lin as saying, adding his client would appeal.

"Tan's earthquake work was not mentioned in the verdict because of concern he would have too much public support on this issue," said Roseann Rife of Amnesty International in Hong Kong, the Monitor reported.

"The message is that civil society can participate, if at all, only under the government's guidance and with its permission," she said.

India's The Hindu, citing official figures, reported more than 7,000 schools, some of them newly built, were destroyed in the quake, killing at least 5,300 school children.

The Voice of America reported that on Tuesday, Chinese police stopped a Hong Kong TV crew from attending Tan's trial.

A U.S. Embassy official in Beijing was quoted as saying his government is dismayed at the sentence and called on the Chinese government to release Tan and other jailed dissidents.