Court Rejects Dissident’s Appeal

A court took less than 10 minutes Friday to reject an appeal of Chinese dissident Wang Dan’s 11-year sentence for subversion. Wang was given no chance to argue his case, his mother, Wang Lingyun said. Only the judge spoke, announcing the decision by the Beijing Higher Level People’s Court to uphold the trial court’s verdict.

The appeal was heard during heavily guarded, closed-court proceedings that were a reprise of Wang’s secretive Oct. 30 trial.

With Wang’s conviction, Communist Party leaders silenced one of the last active voices of dissent from the student-led protests that swelled Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.

A potent organizer and passionate orator, Wang Dan became No. 1 on the government’s most-wanted list after it sent in the military to crush the 1989 protests.

He served 3-1/2 years of a 4-year sentence. Despite police harassment, including threats on his life, Wang resumed his pro-democracy activities, writing for foreign publications and meeting with other leading dissidents.

Those activities - which police ended by detaining him in May 1995 - were used as evidence to convict him last month of trying to subvert the government.