Chinese authorities have freed a former newspaper reporter and cyberdissident who was jailed for subversion in 2003, a human rights group said yesterday.
Huang Jinqiu (黃金秋) was released from prison in October after serving eight years of a 12-year sentence, US-based Human Rights in China said in a statement.
Huang, who worked as a journalist for several newspapers and was a regular contributor to dissident news Web site Boxun, was arrested in September 2003 and convicted of subversion the following year.
His sentence was reduced by nearly four years for manual labor he performed in prison and “other reasons,” the activist group said.
While he was in prison, Huang was tortured and kept in solitary confinement for periods of time, it said.
The subversion charge was related to Huang’s attempts to set up a democracy party online and recruit members to the organization.
Political power in China is monopolized by the Chinese Communist Party and authorities have ruled out a move to multi-party democracy.