Prominent Chinese dissident freed from jail (Reuters)

BEIJING, Jun (Reuters) – One of China's most prominent dissidents, Hu Jia, was reunited with his family early on Sunday after serving three-and-a-half-years in jail on subversion charges, but he needed rest and was not ready to speak in public, his wife said.

Hu, 37, was convicted in 2008 for "inciting subversion of state power" for criticizing human rights restrictions in China, and was seen by some supporters as a potential recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize before it went to another jailed Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, last year.

"He is back home with his parents and me," his wife, Zeng Jinyan, told Reuters in a brief telephone interview.

"I don't know if he can speak later. At the moment, I want everything to be peaceful. I'm worried that doing interviews at this stage might cause problems. Please understand."

Hu's long-scheduled release followed this week's abrupt freeing from detention of the prominent artist and activist Ai Weiwei, and has come while Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is visiting Europe on trips to Hungary, Britain and Germany.

Asked how Hu's health was, his mother, Feng Juan, said by telephone: "It's so so. He was in a very good mood. The first thing he did after coming home was to take a bath. Then he had a meal."

China's Communist Party has cracked down on dissent since February, responding to fears that uprisings across the Arab world could also inspire challenges to its one-party rule, especially ahead of a leadership succession late in 2012.

Many dissidents detained in that drive have been ordered by authorities to stay silent after their release. Hu's wife, Zeng, and other advocates have voiced concern that Chinese authorities might also impose restrictions on him amounting to house arrest after his formal release.

Zeng, a prominent activist in her own right, told Reuters in late May that she was worried by the trend of rights activists coming under informal house arrest after their release from formal detention or jail.

"If we are put under house arrest or disappear, I don't want our daughter to be with us when we endure life under house arrest," she said. "I have sent her to be with my relatives."

Zeng posted messages on Twitter, the micro-blogging site, describing harassment from authorities before Hu's release.

"A prohibition on contact with the media was a condition of Hu Jia's sentence, with the one year's deprivation of political rights on his release, and no doubt the authorities will remind him of that," said Phelim Kine, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group that has denounced the conviction of Hu and other Chinese dissidents.

"Given the current climate of oppression, he will be under extreme pressure to obey," Kine said by telephone.

ENERGETIC CAMPAIGNER

Hu and Zeng have live in an apartment complex in east Beijing called Bobo Freedom City. Many police officers and security guards patrolled the area on Sunday morning.

"A sleepless night and Hu Jia came home at 2:30. Peaceful. Very happy. Needs a period of time to recuperate," Zeng wrote in her latest Twitter entry in Chinese. Most Chinese people lack the know-how to read Twitter, which the government blocks with a censorship firewall.

Hu was detained in late 2007 and then tried and convicted in the following year on subversion charges that stemmed from criticism of the government he had made in Internet writings and interviews with foreign reporters.

China often uses the broad charge of "inciting subversion" to punish dissidents, and when Hu was convicted, state media said that he had bowed to the accusations against him.

Before he was jailed, Hu pursued an energetic career as an environmental protection campaigner, advocate for rural victims of AIDS, and vocal critic of China's restrictions on political dissent. Shaven-headed and wearing bookish spectacles, he was a familiar sight at activist gatherings in Beijing.

Hu is also a vegetarian and Buddhist who has criticized China's controls on that religion in Tibet and voiced sympathy for the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader reviled by Beijing.

Asked about Hu's future plans, Zeng said her husband studied law in prison and has no plans to move abroad.

"According to law, if you have any criminal record you cannot become a lawyer. But he is studying to gain more comprehensive knowledge," Zeng said in May.

"I think he has very clear and fixed ideas about the future, but we don't know what the conditions will be like (after he gets out) ... I think he will (focus) on rights defending."

(Additional reporting by Michael Martina and Benjamin Kang Lim; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

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Prominent Chinese dissident Hu Jia released from jail: wife (Reuters)

BEIJING (Reuters) – One of China's most prominent dissidents, Hu Jia, was reunited with his family in the early hours of Sunday after serving three and a half-years in jail on subversion charges, his wife said.

Hu was convicted in 2008 for "inciting subversion of state power" for criticising human rights problems in China, and he was seen by some supporters as a potential recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize before it went to another jailed Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, last year.

"He is back home with his parents and me," his wife, Zeng Jingyan, told Reuters in a brief telephone interview.

"I don't know if he can speak later. At the moment, I want everything to be peaceful. I'm worried that doing interviews at this stage might cause problems. Please understand."

Hu Jia's release follows the abrupt freeing from detention of the prominent artist and activist Ai Weiwei, and has come while Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is visiting Europe on trips to Hungary, Britain and Germany.

(Reporting by Maxim Duncan and Chris Buckley; Writing by Chris Buckley)

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Syrian army readies sweep of second dissident town (AP)

By ZEINA KARAM and SELCAN HACAOGLU, Associated Press Zeina Karam And Selcan Hacaoglu, Associated Press – 19 mins ago

GUVECCI, Turkey – Syrian army units were poised to sweep into another northern town on Wednesday to crush anti-government protests, sending residents running for their lives as Bashar Assad's regime sought to control the spectacle of thousands of terrified refugees streaming across the border into Turkey.

Maj. Gen. Riad Haddad, head of the military's political department, said tanks surrounding the northern town of Maaret al-Numan had not entered "yet" — suggesting they were readying an operation there. Activists said hundreds of residents were fleeing the town Wednesday.

Haddad also confirmed witness accounts that army units were surrounding the eastern town of al-Boukamal, near the Iraqi frontier, saying the deployment was "to protect the borders." The area was a smuggling route for insurgents and weapons into Iraq in the 2000s, and Syrian officials worry about a reverse flow of arms into Syria.

Facing the most serious threat to his family's 40-year ruling dynasty, President Assad has unleashed his military to seal off strategic areas in the north and east — including the town of Jisr al-Shughour, which was spinning out of government control before the military moved in on Sunday.

Syrian tanks and the government's most loyal troops have been trying to snuff out any chance that the 12-week uprising could gain a base for a wider armed rebellion against Assad.

Some 8,000 Syrians have already sought refuge in camps in neighboring Turkey during the latest military crackdown, which authorities said was necessary to get rid of "armed terrorists." The government blames a foreign conspiracy for the unrest, saying religious extremists are behind it — not true reform-seekers.

Human rights activists say more than 1,400 Syrians have died and some 10,000 have been detained in the government suppression of the 3-month-old uprising, which was inspired by revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

Assad initially responded with vague promises of reform, but the increasingly deadly crackdown has only added fuel to the movement that now says it will settle for nothing less than Assad's ouster.

The thousands of refugees in Turkey have been highly embarrassing to Damascus, and Haddad claimed "gunmen" were "intimidating people into fleeing" Syria.

Syrian Information Minister Adnan Mahmoud called on residents of Jisr al-Shughour to return, saying security, electricity, water and communications have been restored and the area is now safe. An Associated Press reporter on a government-organized trip to Jisr al-Shughour saw vans packed with families and their belongings, apparently returning to their homes.

But refugees who spoke to The AP in Turkey on Wednesday placed blame squarely on the government and its army units and pro-regime militias known as "shabiha."

"You ruined us, Bashar!" refugees shouted in Arabic on Wednesday at a camp in Turkey. "Just leave!"

The Turkish government has largely prevented access to the camps, saying it wants to protect the refugees' privacy. Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has accused Assad's regime of "savagery," but also said he would reach out to the Syrian leader to help solve the crisis.

A special Syrian government envoy, Hassan Turkmani, flew to Ankara and told reporters on arrival Wednesday he would take up the two countries' relations during talks with Erdogan. Asked about the refugees, Turkmani said the Syrians would be "hosted" in Turkey for a short while, Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported.

Information Minister Mahmoud said after a Cabinet meeting late Tuesday that the government had tasked the Syrian Red Crescent Society with coordinating with Turkish authorities to guarantee the return of refugees.

Meanwhile, thousands of Assad supporters staged a massive pro-regime demonstration in the capital, Damascus, carrying pictures of the president and chanting, "The people want Bashar Assad!" Syrian TV said the demonstration expressed "Syrian national unity and Syria's rejection of foreign interference in its internal affairs."

Gen. Haddad, meanwhile, denied widespread witness accounts that elite Syrian troops led by Assad's brother, Maher, had been involved in the northern operation.

The rare briefing by a military official signaled Syria was going out of its way to refurbish its image and deny signs of cracks within the military. Haddad said armed forces were "coherent and carry out all tasks entrusted to them."

The government has found support from Russia, whose foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said no state would be "tolerant of attempts to organize and direct a revolt," Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reported Wednesday. Although Lavrov said Russia insists on reforms in Syria, Moscow opposes any strong U.N. Security Council condemnation of the Syrian crackdown, as proposed by Britain, France and the U.S.

In Geneva, meanwhile, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, called for an investigation of alleged Syrian abuses of anti-government protesters, citing information about "acts of torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment."

___

Karam reported from Beirut.

Associated Press Writer Albert Aji in Jisr al-Shughour contributed to this report.

___

Zeina Karam can be reached on http://twitter.com/zkaram

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Cuban dissident Juan Wilfredo Soto dies

HAVANA (AP) — A Cuban dissident died Sunday following a run-in with authorities at a protest, said fellow government opponents who accused police of beating him and provoking his death.

Juan Wilfredo Soto died early in the morning in the central city of Santa Clara, fellow dissident Guillermo Farinas told The Associated Press in an interview by telephone from a funeral home where he said family members were gathered.

Farinas said Soto was detained and beaten Thursday during an anti-government protest. Soto was hospitalized and Farinas said doctors told him he died of pancreatitis, but he said he had not seen a death certificate yet.

Cuban authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and details of the protest and alleged beating could not be independently confirmed by the AP.

Pancreatitis has a number of possible causes, and Farinas acknowledged that Soto, 46, had a number of health issues including diabetes, circulatory and heart problems and gout.

But Farinas said he believes police are responsible: "This killing cannot go unpunished."

Little-known outside Santa Clara, Soto was among those who supported a 134-day hunger strike by Farinas last year to press for the release of political prisoners, a protest that the European Union recognized by awarding Farinas its Sakharov human rights prize.

The government frequently calls the island's small community of dissidents "mercenaries," common criminals financed from the United States with the purpose of undermining the revolution.

Elizardo Sanchez, leader of the dissident Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, also linked Soto's death to his detention.

"We believe that the blows he received were a catalyst," Sanchez said. "We do not think there was a political intent to kill him, but there was a struggle when he was yelling anti-government slogans."

He alleged that there has been increased physical intimidation and violence against dissidents in the past two months.

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