China tries dissident from US after Obama leaves

A student leader of China's 1989 pro-democracy movement who has long lived in the United States went on trial in China on Thursday, a day after US president Barack Obama finished a visit that raised human rights.

Zhou Yongjun faces fraud charges at the trial in Shehong County in southwest Sichuan province, his lawyer and a long-time girlfriend told Reuters.

Zhou was a leader of the Beijing Students' Autonomous Union in the 1989 protests that ended in a bloody army-led crackdown in the streets around Beijing's Tiananmen Square. He later obtained a green card from the United States, giving him residential rights, but not full citizenship.

"I know from the lawyers that he's on trial today, but the whole process has been kept secret," Zhang Yuewei, Zhou's girlfriend, said from Los Angeles where she lives. She said Zhou's immediate family had also told her of the trial.

Zhou, 42, faces charges of financial fraud involving a bank in Hong Kong, but Zhang and other supporters say the charges were a pretext to punish him for his years of rights activism.

He was handed to Chinese police by authorities in Hong Kong, leading to his detention for nearly a year, Zhang and Hong Kong rights activists said last month.

Lacking a valid Chinese passport, Zhou travelled to Hong Kong with the intention of visiting relatives in China on a Malaysian national's passport in September last year.

"Holding the trial at this time was to show the US president," Zhang said in a separate email. "The Chinese government maybe believes that it has the power and cash to go up against the United States and international society."

Zhou vigorously denied the charges, said his lawyer, Chen Zerui.

"Of course, he pleaded innocent and spoke out to the court in his own defence," Chen said of Zhou, speaking by phone. "He believes the whole case is without any foundation".

In his public comments throughout his four-day visit to China, Obama raised general hopes for broader human rights in Communist Party-ruled China, but avoided raising specific cases. It was unclear, however, whether he raised such cases in his closed-door meetings with China's leaders.

But China's ruling Communist Party appears in no mood to make concessions to dissidents and human rights critics, even with pressure from the West.

In a separate development, officials in Sichuan province told the family of dissident Huang Qi — an activist tried on charges of illegally holding state secrets — that his verdict will be announced on Monday, his wife Zeng Li told Reuters. Because Zhou is not a US citizen, Washington has scant formal power to intervene, and Chinese authorities have no obligations to tell the United States of any developments.

The court did not give a verdict on Thursday. If found guilty, Zhou could face a sentence of up to 10 years or longer in jail, said Chen.

China's courts come under Communist Party control and rarely find defendants innocent.