MCLC: Li Bifeng jailed for 12 years

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: jackie <dujuan99 at gmail.com>
Subject: Li Bifeng jailed for 12 years
***********************************************************

Source: South China Morning Post (11/20/12):
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1086362/li-bifengs-12-year-jail-term
-revenge-helping-dissident-liao-yiwu-flee

Li Bifeng's 12-year jail term 'revenge' for helping dissident Liao Yiwu
flee
By Verna Yu

Friend denies Li Bifeng funded his escape as writer gets 12 years on
contract fraud charges

A Sichuan court jailed writer Li Bifeng for 12 years yesterday on fraud
charges, his lawyer said.

Li's supporters said the authorities suspected he helped dissident author
Liao Yiwu flee the country last year.

The Shehong County People's Court in Suining jailed Li, 48, for "contract
fraud", fining him 300,000 yuan (HK$372,000), his lawyer Ma Xiaopeng said.

The court indictment, posted online, said Li, also a businessman, signed a
contract to buy 63 properties for 33 million yuan from a company two years
ago. He paid 20 million but failed to pay the remainder by the deadline,
voiding the contract, it said.

Ma said Li did not pay the remainder because a new property regulation,
aimed at suppressing speculation, came into force after the signing of the
contract. It said each person could only buy one property and Li decided
he could not go ahead with the purchase.

"The court failed to prove any losses suffered by the other side," Ma
said, stressing the ownership of the properties was never transferred to
Li so the case did not amount to fraud.

The Shehong county court refused to comment yesterday.

Li has been jailed twice before. The first occasion was for five years in
1990, after the Tiananmen crackdown, for counter-revolutionary crimes.
Then, in 1998, he was jailed for seven years for economic crimes after
investigating strikes by workers in Mianyang, Sichuan, on behalf of the
US-based group, Human Rights in China.

Li was arrested in September last year, two months after his friend Liao
fled China.

Rights activist Huang Qi said the authorities believed Li helped Liao
escape, and added that Li had helped a lot of jailed dissidents' families
in the past.

Liao, who now lives in Germany, insisted yesterday that he had never
received help from Li, even though they are good friends. "I never thought
they would sentence him so heavily on this drummed up excuse," he said.
"They are retaliating."

Liao released a statement at the Berlin International Literature Festival
in April, appealing for Li's release. "The police suspect that Li Bifeng
financed my escape - this is a groundless lie," he said in the statement.
"No one knew the reason and motivation for my escape to freedom - not even
my own family."

Liao said Li was a fellow prisoner during his time in jail in the early
1990s and praised him as a "very talented intellectual".

Liao said Li had illegally crossed the border into Myanmar to escape
prosecution after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown but was turned back by the
Myanmese army.

"He was beaten almost to death," Liao wrote.

Liao said he wrote some of Li's tales into his books For a Song and a
Hundred Songs and Bullets and Opium.

 
verna.yu at scmp.com