China cuts jail terms for political prisoners: group

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has disclosed that it has reduced jail terms for some political prisoners, a U.S. human rights group said on Wednesday, calling the cuts a demonstration of the value of outside pressure.

The San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation, which seeks the release of political prisoners in China, said over the past two months it had received information on 19 citizens there convicted of subversion for trying to set up "illegal political groups".

Nine had received sentence reductions since mid-2006, including five who had been freed from prison, the foundation said in an emailed statement.

Another died shortly after being released on medical parole and three of the nine who did not benefit from a reduced sentence had been released after serving out their terms, it said.

"While it is difficult to draw firm conclusions from such a small sample, the information nevertheless suggests that there have been more sentence reductions for political prisoners in the last two years than previously believed," the group said.

A variety of rights groups has used the August Beijing Olympics to pressure China to improve its human rights record.

In May, the Dui Hua Foundation appealed to China to grant a pardon to long-serving prisoners in conjunction with the Olympics, saying such a move would leave a humanitarian legacy for future hosts of the Games.

Dui Hua said it had received the information on the 19 political prisoners from "multiple authoritative sources in the Chinese government that have proven to be reliable in the past".

Eight of the 19, who were jailed for up to 16 years for attempting to form obscure labor rights organizations or political parties, had their names on prisoner lists Dui Hua submitted to Beijing's Foreign Ministry, it said.

Six of the eight received sentence reductions thereafter, three of whom had already been freed, while only three of the 11 prisoners not on the lists received sentence reductions, it said.

"The information on this group of prisoners once again illustrates the impact of being asked about in a human rights dialogue with China's central government," Dui Hua said.

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Nick Macfie and Roger Crabb)