China’s first “cyber-dissident”, whose website reported on sensitive topics including human rights, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for leaking state secrets. Huang Qi ran a website called 64 Tianwang – named after the bloody 4 June1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protesters. His sentence is one of the harshest meted out to a dissident since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, according to court records. Huang was guilty of “leaking national state secrets and providing state secrets to foreign entities”, the statement by the Mianyang intermediate people’s court said, adding that he would be deprived of political rights for four years.
