A dozen Hong Kong pro-democracy activists burned pictures of the Chinese President, Mr Jiang Zemin, yesterday in protest at the jailing of three dissidents by Communist authorities.
They also set on fire a copy of the charge sheet against dissidents Mr Xu Wenli, Mr Wang Youcai and Mr Qin Yongmin outside the Hong Kong branch of the Xinhua News Agency, Beijing's de facto embassy during British rule.
"We strongly protest against the arrest and the sentencing of Chinese Democratic Party members Xu Wenli, Qin Yongmin and Wang Youcai for subversion against the state," the activists' leader, Mr Leung Kwok-hung, said, adding that the dissidents' plan to organise a political party was not a crime.
They called on the Chinese government to immediately release the three men, whose Chinese Democratic Party was declared an "illegal organisation" by the government.
China sentenced Mr Xu to 13 years in prison, Mr Wang to 11 years and Mr Qin to 12 years earlier this week.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Mr Zhu Bangzao, said on Tuesday that "Xu and the others colluded with overseas hostile organisations and accepted overseas assistance to engage in activities for the purpose for subverting state power".
The US, Britain, France, Germany and several human rights organisations have denounced the jailing of the dissidents, saying it breached the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees free speech and assembly and which China signed in October.
The European Union has made a joint protest to China over the jailing of the activists, a spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office said yesterday.
He said the British, German and Austrian ambassadors in Beijing had called on the Chinese authorities to release them immediately.
The protest follows similar action by the US, Canada and Norway. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, said on Tuesday she would continue to press for personal freedoms and the right to a fair trial in China.
Meanwhile, Chinese authorities have ordered a best-selling book, Political China: Facing the Era of Choosing a New Structure, removed from shelves and banned any reprints, media and publishing sources said. The book, a compilation of 39 essays by 32 authors, including journalists, academics and former officials, called for political reforms.
One source said the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party had ordered the popular broad-sheet Southern Weekend in the city of Guangzhou to stop running the expose articles for which it is famous. "Southern Weekend was told to praise the Communist Party more and to stop printing exposes."
The liberal monthly magazine Way, or "fang fa", was struggling for survival after being targeted in the drive to bring the publishing industry into line, said one of the top editors of the magazine, who requested anonymity.