CHINA:ONE OF China's leading dissidents, the rights activist Hu Jia, goes on trial on subversion charges today in a case that is seen as a test of China's promise to improve human rights ahead of this summer's Olympics.
Mr Hu's trial takes place as the Beijing government faces international scrutiny over how it deals with unrest in Tibet. A mild-mannered, slight figure, who suffers from hepatitis B, the 34-year-old advocate for Aids sufferers, Tibetan autonomy and democratic rights was detained by police in late December after spending more than 200 days under house arrest in his Beijing apartment complex, which is called Bobo Freedom City.
His wife Zeng Jinyan, and the couple's four-month-old daughter are still under house arrest, with various family members providing for their needs. Their telephone has been cut off.
Mr Hu has been a thorn in the side of the Beijing government, which deplores the western media focusing on his case and claims it is an example of how journalists are obsessed with human rights and other negative aspects of China's rise, while paying not enough attention to the progress made in recent years.
His trial at Beijing's First Intermediate Court will take place on the same day that China's annual parliament, the National People's Congress, ends. Premier Wen Jiabao is to give his annual news conference, which will be broadcast live on state television.
Mr Hu will be accused of inciting "subversion of state power and the socialist system" using the internet and by talking to foreign reporters, according to one of his lawyers, Li Fangping, and could be jailed for up to five years if convicted. The evidence file submitted by the political police reportedly weighed more than 4kg.
Despite constant surveillance, Mr Hu kept a blog on an overseas website called Boxun and also spoke to foreign journalists. Gaining entry to his apartment building involved negotiating groups of police officers playing cards in the stairwell of his building and standing around outside the apartment block, smoking and chatting idly, or harassing Ms Zeng when she left for work.
Mr Hu is best known for his courageous advocacy work for Aids sufferers in rural China, but he has also embraced the causes of the activist lawyer Gao Zhisheng, and Chen Guangcheng, a blind rural campaigner who has been jailed for four years.
Largely because of his outspoken blog and his strident comments in foreign media, including The Irish Times, Mr Hu's case is one of the highest-profile dissident cases in China for many years. US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice raised his case when she visited Beijing last month, as have other western leaders.