Dissident China reporter freed after 14 years

BEIJING - China has freed a journalist who served more than 14 years of a 15-year sentence for inciting rebellion around the time of the 1989 democracy movement, French-based rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders said on Friday.

Chen Yanbin and colleague Zhang Yafei were sentenced in March 1991 to 15 years in prison for incitement to rebellion and "spreading counter-revolutionary propaganda", the group said.

Chen, co-editor of the dissident review Tielu, or Iron Currents, remained deprived of his civil and political rights for the next four years, it said.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed on the night of June 3-4, 1989, when the army advanced on Tiananmen Square to end nearly two months of student-led democrat protests.

"It is unforgivable that the authorities should only have allowed Chen Yanbin a few months reduction in sentence for an offence of opinion," the group said.

"Depriving him of his civil and political rights demonstrates that the government still seeks to prevent intellectuals from speaking out, particularly on the Beijing Spring of 1989."

The group did not say anything about Zhang.

Dissident Yan Jun was released on April 4 from prison in Xi'an, Reporters Without Borders said.

Yan was arrested in April 2003 and sentenced to two years in prison that December for calling for a review of the sentence against students arrested after the 1989 movement.

- REUTERS