![\"52803673-7782-4b3f-b0a8-b87f88dd92e5](\"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2014\/09\/52803673-7782-4b3f-b0a8-b87f88dd92e5-1.jpeg\")
<\/a>Zhang Lin (L) and his daughter Zhang Anni (R) in an undated photo.\nPhoto courtesy of the Zhang family<\/p>\n
Authorities in the eastern Chinese province of Anhui on Friday handed a three-and-a-half-year jail term to a prominent dissident over a protest against his daughter’s removal from school because of his activism.<\/p>\n
Zhang Lin, a veteran member of the banned opposition China Democracy Party (CDP), was sentenced by the Bengshan District People’s Court in Anhui’s Bengbu city for “gathering a crowd to disrupt public order” at a demonstration in April 2013, at which dozens of people protested an elementary school for preventing his 10-year-old daughter Zhang Anni from attending class.<\/p>\n
“At around 10.00 a.m., I called the judge in Zhang Lin’s case…and he said the sentenced had been passed of three years and six months,” Zhang’s lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan, who is currently in the Xinjiang regional capital Urumqi on another high-profile case, told RFA on Friday.<\/p>\n
“When I heard this, I told them they’d gone crazy,” Liu said. “I really hadn’t expected them to hand down such a heavy sentence.”<\/p>\n
He said Zhang’s case had been delayed three times and delayed for more than a year already.<\/p>\n
“And yet they still sentence him to three-and-a-half years,” Liu said.<\/p>\n
“This judgement is ridiculous,” he added. “I think it’s because the authorities have been cracking down on dissent, and street protests in particular, since last year.”<\/p>\n
‘Reasonable’<\/p>\n
Zhang pleaded not guilty at his trial last December, telling the court his own actions had been “reasonable and lawful” at all times and were a response to the illegal actions of the Anhui authorities.<\/p>\n
Anni was dubbed “China’s youngest prisoner of conscience” after she was taken out of school and detained for several hours in February, denied food water and a blanket, and later prevented from attending school and held under house arrest, according to rights groups.<\/p>\n
“Zhang Lin’s case only came about because he moved his daughter from a school in Bengbu to one in [the provincial capital] Hefei, and the Hefei state security police interfered with her education there,” Liu said.<\/p>\n
“This attracted the support of a lot of netizens, who went to Hefei, and the police cleared the area,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Whichever way you look at it, the charge of ‘gathering a crowd to disrupt public order’ doesn’t stand up, in my opinion,” Liu added.<\/p>\n
“Especially given that there were no serious consequences.”<\/p>\n
Zhang’s daughter Anni has been living in the U.S. since September 2013, along with her half-sister, who issued a statement on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“It is a crime that this brave man is in jail simply for standing up for Anni’s right to go to school,” Zhang Ruli wrote in a statement e-mailed to RFA. 2014-09-05 Zhang Lin (L) and his daughte … Continue reading
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