THE Chinese dissident Mr Liu Xiaobo has been ordered to serve three years in a labour camp in a term imposed just hours after police detained him, relatives said yesterday. And the wife of another pro-democracy activist, Mr Wang Xizhe, who recently issued a joint statement with Mr Liu, said he was missing from his home in southern Guangzhou.
Police had notified Mr Liu Xiaobo's wife early yesterday of the administrative three year sentence, which does not need a court trial, but gave her no reason for the punishment.
I am very angry, Ms Liu Xia said. "How can they do this? He did not do anything illegal. All he did was exercise his freedom of speech. . . Citizens have freedom of speech.
She said she had not yet decided whether to appeal on his behalf.
"Re-education through labour is the personal power of the Public Security Bureau, it doesn't have to go through judicial departments, she said. The Public Security can just do as they wish."
Mr Liu, a renowned literary critic, gained fame as a dissident in the 1989 student led pro-democracy movement that was crushed by the military.
On September 30th, Mr Liu and Mr Wang issued a statement urging China's communist authorities to honour a promise in 1945 to give people freedom of the press and speech and to form political parties and stage demonstrations. The two also demanded that the Communist Party leader, Mr Jiang Zemin, be indicted for saying that the People's Liberation Army was under the "absolute leadership" of the party instead of the state.
Mr Wang did not return home on Tuesday and his wife said she was very worried. He was paroled in 1993 after serving 12 years of a 14 year term for sedition and, he remains deprived of his political rights.