Authorities in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing handed a three-year jail term to a journalist who hit out at the "graft-busting, revolutionary songs" campaigns of the city's ousted former Communist Party chief, Bo Xilai, during the latter's tenure there, his wife has revealed.
In the first public announcement of her husband's fate which follows Bo's removal from office last month, the wife of journalist Gao Yingpiao said via the QQ microblog service that he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment by a Chongqing court in 2010 for "endangering state security."
Gao had already served 18 months of the jail term, which was likely the result of a series of blog posts he had made on QQ during 2009 that were highly critical of Bo's high-profile, populist policies.
Calls to Gao's wife went unanswered on Monday.
Beijing-based rights lawyer Li Zhuang, who said he had been "closely following" Gao's case, said the journalist's case had only come to light in the wake of Bo's fall.
He said the fact that his wife had kept silent for so long was indicative of the atmosphere of "terror" in Chongqing during Bo's leadership.
"The 'anti-corruption' campaigns of that era did huge emotional damage to everyone who was attacked in them, and their families," Li said. "
"Some people are reduced to nervous wrecks if you even try to bring up that time with them, and they need to seek psychological counseling," he said.
More cases?
He said that more cases from Bo's time in Chongqing might come to light, now that Gao's wife had spoken out openly.
Political analyst and veteran journalist Jiang Weiping also served a six-year jail term for "revealing state secrets" while working as a correspondent for the Hong Kong-based Wen Hui Po newspaper in the northeastern port city of Dalian while Bo was Party secretary there.
Jiang, who now lives in Canada, said he wasn't surprised to read about Gao's sentence, because Bo had a habit of pursuing his critics personally.
"In 2002 an elderly person wrote some graffiti on a pedestrian bridge in Dalian that said 'Down with [then president] Jiang Zemin; down with [then municipal Party chief] Bo Xilai,'" Jiang said.
"Bo Xilai personally intervened and ordered that they be sent to Shanghai for a psychiatric evaluation," he said. "This person was pretty tough and kept saying that they didn't have a mental illness, and eventually the report said that he wasn't mentally ill."
"But they held him in there for 11 months," Jiang added.
He said more than half of the 600-odd criminal gang members convicted during the height of Bo's "da hei" anti-graft campaigns in Chongqing were framed.
"I think these miscarriages of justice, including Gao's, should be overturned, but they involve so many sensitive political topics, so it would be very hard to do," Jiang said.
Reported by Tang Qiwei for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.