For more news and videos visit ☛ http://english.ntdtv.com<br />Follow us on Twitter ☛ http://twitter.com/NTDTelevision<br />Add us on Facebook ☛ http://on.fb.me/s5KV2C<br /><br />A Chinese court has sentenced a dissident writer to prison for "inciting subversion". Chen Xi was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday after writing essays critical of the ruling Communist Party. Here's more.<br /><br />A Chinese court sentenced a veteran dissident on Monday to 10 years in jail for subversion.<br /><br />57-year-old Chen Xi was convicted over 36 essays critical of the ruling Communist Party that he published on overseas Chinese websites, according to his wife, Zhang Qunxuan.<br /><br />Chen's wife says the court in Guiyang, southwest China, tried Chen and declared him guilty of "inciting subversion of state power", and said he deserved a tough sentence of a decade in prison.<br /><br />[Zhang Qunxuan, Wife of Chen Xi]:<br />"At the end of the trial, Chen Xi said, 'I am a law-abiding person. I respect the court's verdict. I will not appeal, but I am innocent.' This is his attitude in the end."<br /><br />Chen has been jailed twice before -- he was jailed for three years for his support of the 1989 pro-democracy protests, and again in 1996. Since his release in 2005, Chen had been an organizer of a citizens' human rights forum in Guiyang.<br /><br />Chen's wife said he continued to speak out despite the risks.<br /><br />[Zhang Qunxuan, Wife of Chen Xi]:<br />"If the government wants democracy and progression, you need people who speak out their negative opinions. This is not to say to overthrow you. To subvert you - can he do that? Does he have any army? Does he have a police force? Does he have courts? With a piece of paper and a pen, can he subvert you? Are you so fragile? So what they say is quite naïve, I'm telling you, it's unreasonable."<br /><br />"Inciting subversion" is a charge often used to punish dissidents critical of the Communist Party, and China's Party-run courts rarely find in favor of defendants in trials, especially for political charges.
