A BEIJING court yesterday rejected the appeal of dissident Wang Dan against an 11-year prison term for conspiring to overthrow the Chinese government. The closed hearing took only 10 minutes.
Placards protesting against the jailing of Wang were waved by pro-democracy protesters who scuffled with police in Hong Kong yesterday when the Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr Qian Qichen, arrived on his first official visit.
No one was permitted to speak at the dissident's hearing in the Beijing courthouse yesterday morning except for the judge who read the verdict from a script, according to Wang's mother, Ms Wang Lingyun.
"It was all prepared in advance," she told a reporter. "It was very unfair."
The family held a one hour sit in protest at the court building. Reporters were kept away by police. Wang (27), a student leader in the 1989 pro democracy movement, was convicted two weeks ago in a Beijing court on charges of subversion and conspiracy to help other dissidents. He has been held in a detention centre and is now expected to be moved to a regular prison.
The rejection of the appeal against Wang's sentence, which has drawn international protests, closes a long chapter of dissident trials following events in Tiananmen Square in 1989. It comes just a few days before the arrival of the US Secretary of State, Mr Warren Christopher, on the first top level American visit for two years.
Wang was first arrested a month after the pro-democracy demonstrations were crushed by the Chinese army in June 1989, and was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for counter revolutionary propaganda and incitement.
This time he was charged with publishing anti-government articles in the Hong Kong and Taiwan press and taking a correspondence course with the University of California.
In Hong Kong, Mr Qian presided over the first session of a 400 member selection committee chosen by Beijing for a month long task of selecting a chief executive to succeed Governor Chris Patten after June 30th next year.
"For the past 150 years, the governors appointed by Britain numbered more than 20 odd but did they ever consult the people of Hong Kong? Of course not," Mr Qian told the panel.
"The process of setting up the selection committee is the real beginning of democracy in Hong Kong and not the end of democracy in Hong Kong as some people have said."
China was angered by democratic reforms introduced by Mr Patten, which it saw as a British attempt to dictate the future of Hong Kong under Chinese authority after failing to introduce democracy itself for more than 150 years. The selection committee's first function was to narrow the field for chief executive. Only those nominated by at least 50 members of the panel could enter a run off for the job of running Hong Kong after British withdrawal on June 30th. The final vote will be on December 11th.
Four prominent Hong Kong figures emerged as front runners. They are businessmen Mr Tung Cheehwa (59) and Mr Peter Woo (50), and former judges Mr Simon Li (74) and Mr Ti Liang Yang (67), Hong Kong's former chief justice.
The British Foreign Secretary, Mr Malcolm Rilkind, said on Thursday that China risked creating "confusion and uncertainty" in Hong Kong. " China would have to explain to Hong Kong and the world why they had chosen to replace a body for which more than a million Hong Kong people voted by one chosen by a handpicked electorate of only 400, he told the House of Commons.
About 30 police surrounded a group of protesters near the convention centre where the 400 Hong Kong citizens chosen by Beijing, held their meeting. They pushed them towards barricades keeping back other picketers. Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong have attacked the Chinese plans for the administration of the territory and refused to take part in the selection committee.
Police held back a surge of demonstrators carrying a black coffin to symbolise the death of democracy and shouting "Free Wang Dan, release Wei Jingsheng, oppose the provisional legislature."
Last December, Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng was given a 14 year sentence for opposition to the communist government.
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