Tursunjan Hezim, Uighur editor of well known website Bilik, has reportedly been given a seven-year prison sentence. The sentence was handed down for unknown charges at a secret trial in July 2010, but has only been made public now. Hezim had been in detention at a secret location since 2009, after ethnic riots broke out in the Chinese north-western region of Xinjiang.
The police has come down hard on Chinese demonstrators, detaining and putting under arrest hundreds of activists and human rights campaigners. Journalists trying to cover the demonstrations have also been dealt with harshly, and were detained, beaten, and their equipment confiscated. Calls for a Tunisian-style ‘Jasmine Revolution’ to be replicated in China were met with little success.
Journalists trying to visit Chen Guangcheng, a human rights activist who is under house arrest, have come under attack to stop them from meeting him. A number of reporters have been attacked by men in plain-clothes who have set up checkpoints leading up to Guangcheng’s residence, and some have had their equipment confiscated or destroyed. A CNN reporter was filmed being manhandled and then coming under a stone attack as he tried to make his way to visit Guangcheng.
Prominent Chinese activist, Chen Guangcheng, and his wife are reported to have been severely beaten by security officials after a secretly recorded video of their house arrest was publicly released. Guangcheng was released in September 2010, after completing a four year prison sentence for publishing a report about forced abortions and sterilisations carried out by authorities. Both Guangcheng and his wife, Yuan Weijin, have been under house arrest since his release from prison.