Chinese would-be opposition party activist released after 11 years in prison

Chinese opposition activist released from prison

BEIJING — One of the leaders of a would-be Chinese opposition group has been released from prison after completing an 11-year sentence for alleged subversion, a human rights group said Wednesday.

Wu Yilong was one of dozens of dissidents detained in 1998 after attempting to register the China Democracy Party in the eastern province of Zhejiang. The attempt was crushed six months later with leading organizers sentenced to up to 13 years in prison, most on the vaguely defined charge of incitement to subvert state power.

Wu, 43, was released on Monday and was in relatively good mental and physical condition, according to the activist network Chinese Human Rights Defenders. At the time of his arrest, Wu had been a student in the master’s program in literature at Zhejiang University, but was expelled for his political activism.

China’s Communist Party brooks no organized opposition to its single-party rule, although it permits the existence of eight tiny officially recognized parties that serve purely in an advisory role.