A Chinese dissident charged with subversion for e-mailing articles criticizing official attitudes towards the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests went on trial Wednesday.
Wang Jinbo, 29, was brought to court in the eastern province of Shandong, but the hearing recessed in the afternoon with no announcement about when another one would be held or a verdict reached, Wang's father Wang Xiuyu said.
"There was no verdict. The court said we have to wait for notice," Wang Xiuyu told AFP, adding the court heard the results of an investigation into the case.
Wang Jinbo was arrested in May and three months later was charged with "inciting the subversion of state power", the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Hong Kong said.
The charge stemmed from articles by Wang calling for the overturning of the government's official verdict that the 1989 protests were "counter-revolutionary".
Some six weeks of demonstrations by unarmed student protesters and citizens were violently crushed by the Chinese military in June 1989.
The articles, e-mailed to overseas Chinese organizations, also called on the communist government to free political dissidents, the center said.
Since his arrest, Wang has gone on five hunger strikes lasting a total of a month, it added.
Wang Xiuyu had demanded that Shandong's Junan County Court overturn its decision to try his son behind closed doors and urged the restoration of his right to a public trial.
However, the elder Wang's request was denied. Only relatives were allowed to attend the trial Wednesday.
Wang Jinbo's arrest is the latest in a series of detentions and trials over recent years that reflect the government's determination to prevent free expression and free access to information on the Internet.
In September, a court in the central province of Hunan sentenced Zhu Ruixiang, 50, to three years in jail on subversion charges for using e-mail to receive news reports and essays critical of government policy and distributing them to friends in China.
And the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Lu Xinhua, a freelance journalist, was tried in September in Hubei province, also central China, for writing articles about rural unrest and official corruption that appeared on overseas-based Internet sites -- AFP
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