Liu Nianchun and Xiao Biguang have been ordered to serve three years in labour camps. Both were arbitrarily detained without charge or trial. Li Hai has been charged with “leaking state secrets”. Liu Nianchun, a 48-year-old labour activist and a signatory to two 1995 petitions calling for democratic reforms, has been held without charge or trial since his arrest on 21 May 1995. Xiao Biguang, a Christian in Beijing and a founder member of the League for the Protection of the Rights of the Working People, was arrested on 12 April 1994 and is reportedly in ill-health. Li Hai, a philosophy student active during the 1989 pro-democracy movement and a signatory to one of the 1995 democratic reform petitions, was arrested on 31 May 1995. All three are prisoners of conscience. There is also concern that Chu Hailan, Liu Nianchun’s wife, and Gou Qinhai, Xiao Biguang’s wife, have been under close surveillance by the police since their husbands’ arrest.
