Chinese dissident Chen Wei jailed for nine years/ENG

A court in southwest China on Friday sentenced veteran human rights activist Chen Wei to nine years in jail for “inciting subversion of state power”, his lawyers and rights groups said.

Chen is one of dozens of Chinese activists detained by police in February in the wake of political upheaval that rocked the Arab world and sparked calls for similar anti-government demonstrations in China.

The court in Suining city in Sichuan province convicted Chen, 42, after a trial lasting less than three hours on Friday over essays he had written that were critical of the Communist Party, China Human Rights Defenders said.

Chen does not plan to appeal the sentence, his lawyer Zheng Jianwei told AFP.

“He is not guilty. He criticised the party and there was no law banning that,” Zheng said.

After the sentence was read out in court, Chen said he was innocent and declared “democracy will definitely prevail and dictators will definitely fall”, another lawyer Liang Xiaojun told AFP.