Wu Lihong also told AFP that authorities tried to force him to confess to bogus extortion charges. He defiantly vowed to clear his name.

"I am innocent, it's obvious that the authorities have sought to harm me. I will continue to appeal the conviction and seek to clear my name," Wu, 42, told AFP by phone from his home in Yixing city in the eastern province of Jiangsu.

Wu was arrested in April 2007 and sentenced to three years on extortion charges after campaigning for years against pollution in Taihu lake, one of China's biggest freshwater lakes and once famed for its beauty.

Wu, who was released on April 12, said he was repeatedly beaten in jail, kept in solitary confinement and denied telephone contact and visits with family and friends.

"They used tree branches to whip my head, burned my hands with cigarettes and kicked and beat me until my arms and legs were swollen and my head was spinning," Wu said.

"In July 2007, Yixing's (Communist) party secretary and the police chief told me, 'If you confess in writing, we will let you go. If you don't cooperate, then we will fabricate evidence to make you a criminal.'"

Wu was once given an environmental award by the government for his efforts to clean up Taihu and shame the lake's major industrial polluters.

But he was detained temporarily in 2002. Wu has said Yixing officials feared his activism would cause economic losses to the region's industry.

After his arrest in 2007, his wife and colleagues clamoured for his release and accused the local government and police of seeking to torture a confession out of him.

A toxic algae bloom in Taihu lake in May that year contaminated water supplies for more than 2.3 million people in Wuxi city, which sits across the lake from Yixing, bringing nationwide attention to the issue.

Wu was finally convicted in August 2007 after repeated delays in his public trial, which his relatives said at the time were ordered by local authorities so that Wang could heal from his prison beatings.

Wu alleged other humiliating treatment in jail, including even tight restrictions on eating.

"When (guards) said 'start', I could eat. When they said 'stop', I had to stop no matter whether I had finished eating or not," he said.

He also said he was forced to run in circles outside after meals "until I was mentally exhausted," and was kept in a windowless cell. The only contact he was allowed was with two prison guards.

earlier related report
China insists will make good on smoking ban pledge
Beijing (AFP) May 11, 2010 - China, the world's biggest consumer of tobacco, has insisted it will honour a pledge to ban smoking in public places by 2011 in accordance with an international treaty, state media said Tuesday.

The health ministry said it intended to implement a plan to prohibit smoking from next year in all indoor public places and offices, as well as on trains and buses, the Global Times reported.

Senior ministry official Yang Qing said the goal had been set in accordance with the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which came into force in early 2005. China ratified it that same year.

The treaty calls for signatory nations to put in place "effective legislation" and other measures which provide for "protection from exposure to tobacco smoke" in indoor public places.

But one activist and an official at a government agency raised doubts that the rules could be implemented in a country where more than a quarter of the population smokes.

"Law enforcement is not in place, so regulations exist in name only," the Global Times quoted Yang Gonghuan, deputy director of the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, as saying.

Wu Yiqun, deputy director of the anti-smoking advocacy group Thinktank, said she believed the chances of a nationwide ban working were slim, the China Daily reported.

Numerous Chinese cities already have bans on smoking in public places, but enforcement remains weak.

About 350 million of China's 1.3 billion people smoke cigarettes, with the nation consuming up to one-third of the tobacco products sold annually worldwide, according to the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control.

Up to one million Chinese die every year from lung cancer or cardiovascular diseases directly linked to tobacco consumption, it said in a release last year.

In December last year, the WHO said only 17 countries had enforced bans on smoking in public places.

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