Liaoyang Labor Activist Xiao Yunliang Released From Prison 24 Days Early

Labor activist Xiao Yunliang was released on February 23, 2006, from Kangjiashan Prison in Shenyang city, Liaoning province, according to a February 28 press release from the Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S. NGO that monitors political imprisonment in China. The remaining 24 days of his four-year sentence were commuted, and he is subject to two years deprivation of political rights until February 22, 2008.

Xiao was a laid-off worker who participated in large-scale protests in Liaoyang city, also in Liaoning, in 2002. Xiao worked at, and retired from, the Liaoyang Ferrous Alloy Factory and was among the leaders of peaceful mass demonstrations in March 2002 in connection with the shutdown and bankruptcy of the factory. Public security officials originally detained Xiao for "illegal assembly and demonstration," but on January 15, 2003, the Liaoyang Intermediate People’s Court instead tried him on charges of "subversion of state power" because he allegedly was involved in the banned China Democracy Party, according to the China Labour Bulletin and a Human Rights Watch translation of the December 27, 2002 indictment. "Subversion of state power" is a crime under Article 105(1) of China's Criminal Law. Xiao denied all the charges, and his lawyer argued in court that Xiao was protesting because the factory management had not paid him his pension for 23 months.

The Liaoyang court also tried on the same day Yao Fuxin, another Liaoyang protest leader, who received a seven-year sentence. The two were convicted on May 9, 2003, and an appellate court heard Xiao’s and Yao’s appeals without permitting either defendant’s lawyers or families to attend. Yao is being held in the Lingyuan No. 2 Prison in Lingyuan city, Liaoning. Xiao is nearly 60 years old, and both Xiao and Yao have suffered from poor health in prison, according to a December 2003 report by Human Rights in China.