Activist sent to labour camp for backing dissident

Chinese authorities have sentenced an outspoken Shanghai activist to 18 months of re-education through labour for her protest.

SHANGHAI, March 12, 2010 (AFP) - Chinese authorities have sentenced an outspoken Shanghai activist to 18 months of re-education through labour for her protest at the trial of leading dissident Liu Xiaobo, her husband said Friday.

A rights group warned that the case of Mao Hengfeng could signal a tougher stance from Shanghai authorities looking to silence dissent in the run-up to the six-month World Expo, which begins on May 1.

Shanghai security officials handed down the punishment to Mao, 48, last week for shouting slogans outside a Beijing courthouse in December in support of Liu, who was jailed for 11 years for subversion, her husband Wu Xuewei told AFP.

Wu said he had received a notice on Monday informing him that his wife was being sent to a labour camp for disturbing social order.

"I think it’s all lies, and they just want to jail Mao using illegal excuses," he said.

Mao was shouting slogans about human rights to show support for Liu, a writer and former professor who was convicted on subversion charges after he co-authored "Charter 08", a manifesto calling for political reform in China.

She has repeatedly run into trouble with the authorities since the late 1980s, when she resisted pressure to have an abortion and broke Chinese law by giving birth to a second child.

She was dismissed from her job at a soap factory after the birth and tried unsuccessfully to get the courts to uphold her right to work.

Re-education through labour (RTL) is an administrative punishment generally handed down for minor offences such as prostitution, but is also used against political opponents so they can be locked up without trial.

Sharon Hom, the executive director of Human Rights in China, warned of the wider implications of Mao's case for the dissident community ahead of Expo.

"In the period leading up to the May opening of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo in particular, we urge the international community to pay close attention to the Chinese authorities’ continued use of RTL as a means to cleanse the city of activists and petitioners," she said.

Mao's attempts to petition the government have resulted in multiple detentions, forced eviction and three admissions to a psychiatric hospital -- another tactic often used to silence dissidents.

She was released in November 2008 after serving a two-and-a-half year sentence for "intentionally damaging property" while in detention.

In 2004, she was also sentenced to one-and-a-half years of re-education through labour.