For Zhao Yan, righteous fight leads to Chinese prison

BEIJING: "Righteous" is the word friends and relatives of Zhao Yan pick most often when asked to describe the 44-year-old New York Times researcher who was sentenced on Friday to three years in a Chinese jail.

Ultimately, they said, it was his fearless fight for justice that made him a criminal in the eyes of a state which tolerates no questioning of its authority.

"Zhao Yan is an extremely righteous person," said his sister Zhao Kun. "He is tolerant and generous towards his family and friends, and what's more he's not the kind of person who's very interested in money."

This is why the charge that sent him to jail, of allegedly cheating a farmer of 20,000 yuan ($2,500), was an excuse to simply lock him up and silence an influential voice for fairness, she said.

"I know my brother well. He speaks up for the common people. He wouldn't cheat a farmer like that," his sister said.

When the verdict was pronounced in a Beijing court, Zhao Kun had difficulty recognizing her brother.

"He was visibly thinner than before, and he looked very stern," she said.

This is not how he is remembered by friends, who describe him as constantly cheerful and fond of singing.

"He used to exude happiness. He would make everyone around him happy," said Li Li, a Beijing business executive and among his closest acquaintances.

The road that eventually led to jail was a winding one.

After stints as a police officer and an entrepreneur in his native province of Heilongjiang in China's frozen northeast, he eventually became a journalist -- and discovered the power of the written word to put things right.

Zhao started making his mark in 2002 after joining China Reform, a publication that rapidly earned a reputation for its hard-hitting reports on graft in the countryside.

This brought him into contact with oppressed farmers who kept in poverty so a few corrupt officials could become rich.

"It's in his nature to speak up for people who are treated unfairly," said his sister Zhao Kun.

His outspoken defence of the downtrodden made him enemies among local power holders in north China's Hebei province and in Fujian province in the southeast -- enemies who did not forgive him even after he joined the New York Times in April 2004.

In June 2004, agents from Fujian raided his Heilongjiang home, dealing a severe shock to his bed-ridden father, who died a few days later.

Zhao was arrested in September 2004 after the New York Times correctly reported that former president Jiang Zemin was about to resign from his last official post as the country's top military leader.

At the time, Jiang's retirement was a closely guarded state secret, although it was widely expected.

Zhao was charged with leaking state secrets to the newspaper, which he and the New York Times always denied.

Zhao had similarly maintained his innocence on the fraud charge, and his lawyers said Friday it was likely he would appeal.