China labor activist free after 7 years jail

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5igqDeH_CzzXBHQ6wQ93aWujZV1-gD96VHUKG0

By ALEXA OLESEN – 17 hours ago

BEIJING (AP) — A labor leader who led some of the largest protests in communist Chinese history and was released from jail this week after serving a seven-year sentence said Tuesday he has no regrets about the activism that led to his arrest.

Yao Fuxin, 59, was released Monday from Lingyuan No. 2 Prison in Liaoning, a province in China's industrial northeast, after serving seven years for subversion of state power.

Yao and another laid-off factory worker, Xiao Yunliang, were arrested in 2002 after tens of thousands of fired workers demanded better benefits from bankrupt state-owned factories in protests in Liaoyang, an industrial base in Liaoning.

They were among the largest protests reported since China's 1949 communist revolution.

"There's nothing wrong in what I did," Yao said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "I was just exercising my rights, which are given by the constitution. What did I do wrong as a citizen? It was worth it. I feel no regret at all."

State media said after their trial that the men were convicted of subversion for trying to set up a Liaoyang branch of the would-be opposition China Democratic Party that hoped to challenge the Communist Party's monopoly on political power.

FULL story at link.