China state security trials “find 99 pct guilty”

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Ninety-nine percent of people tried
in China for “endangering state security” are found guilty, a
prominent human rights activist said on Tuesday, calling on
President Hu Jintao to release two detained journalists.

Such state security cases — many involving perceived
threats to Communist rule, spying or the theft of murkily
defined state secrets — have the highest conviction rate of
any crime in China, said John Kamm, head of the U.S.-based Dui
Hua Foundation.

Moreover, those found guilty get the longest sentences,
with two-thirds of all such cases resulting in terms of five
years or more, Kamm, the veteran China
businessman-turned-campaigner, told Hong Kong’s Foreign
Correspondents’ Club.

From the start of 1998 to the end of 2004, there were 4,500
people prosecuted for endangering state security, he said
citing data from the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.

“The great majority were detained for non-violent
expression of their political and religious beliefs,” Kamm
said.

Citing several polls, Kamm noted that China’s image and
popularity on the international stage had plummeted in the past
year and he put it down to a steady flow of negative news
reports out of China, blocking Web sites, arresting
journalists, covering up environmental disasters and closing
newspapers, among others.

“China’s deteriorating international image is impacting the
country’s ability to achieve its foreign policy goals, and
could well affect its ability to stage a successful Olympics in
2008,” he said.

Hu, who is scheduled to visit the United States in April,
should take action soon if he wants to improve China’s image,
Kamm said, calling on him to order the release of journalists
Ching Cheong and Zhao Yan.

Ching, a reporter for Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper
accused of spying for Taiwan, has been held since last April,
and was formally arrested in August. New York Times researcher
Zhao Yan was arrested in September 2004 and charged with
exposing state secrets.

“If you want to restore China’s international image to what
it was 12 months ago, treating journalists better is a good
place to start,” Kamm said.

Kamm also called on Hu to resume the granting of sentence
reductions and early releases for political prisoners — a
practise that he said has been frozen for the past year.