Three Chinese activists jailed in China

Three Chinese rights activists were sentenced to jail by a court on Friday in Guangzhou in southern China. Guo Feixiong was jailed for six years while fellow activists Liu Yuandong, 37, and Sun Desheng, 32, were sentenced to three years and two-and-a-half years in prison, respectively. They were found guilty of “gathering a crowd to disrupt order in a public place”. Amnesty International has called for the immediate and unconditional release of the three activists. “It’s a dark day when people advocating for press freedom and democracy are subjected to torture and other ill-treatment and sentenced to lengthy prison terms after sham trials,” Amnesty’s Roseann Rife said. Guo, 48, had previously been jailed for nearly five years for his activism. “He wasn’t guilty of anything at all. This sentence is unacceptable and unfair,” Guo’s lawyer Zhang Lei told Reuters. Under fire from free-speech advocates, a Beijing court on Thursday gave medical parole to a 71- year-old journalist jailed for “leaking” an official document warning against liberal political ideas. Beijing’s high court ruled veteran journalist Gao Yu would receive treatment outside prison for a “serious illness”, her lawyer, Mo Shaoping, told the AFP news agency. SOURCE:Al Jazeera