Sichuan Earthquake Activist Sentenced to Five Years in Prison

Sichuan Earthquake Activist Sentenced to Five Years in Prison 2010-02-10 14:07 Environmental campaigner and writer Tan Zuoren best known for his work following China’s deadly 2008 Sichuan earthquake. But on Tuesday, at a court in Chengdu in Chinas Sichuan province, Tan was sentenced to five years in prison for subversion—for emails he sent about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Amnesty International is demanding Tans immediate release. They say the comments he emailed about Tiananmen Square are not the real reason for his imprisonment. They say its because of his investigations into the Sichuan earthquake. [Roseann Rife; Deputy Director, Amnesty International Asia]: Amnesty believes that this verdict certainly was tied partly to the work he did in visiting the families and victims of the Sichuan earthquake and tried to document the deaths in the earthquake.” Supporters say Tan was working on an independent report on the collapse of school buildings during the Sichuan earthquake. 80000 people died in the quake, more than 5000 of them children, according to official state statistics. [Roseann Rife; Deputy Director, Amnesty International Asia]: Back during his trial in August, they actually discussed the earthquake and that was brought up in his trial and it’s very unusual now that in the verdict we received today, the earthquake was not mentioned at all, only focusing on Tiananmen. We can only assume the reason for that is because there is actually a lot of public …