The letter penned by Hu Jiwei, former editor of the party newspaper the People's Daily, suggested that Liu's Christmas Day subversion conviction violated some of the principles the old revolutionaries had fought for.

Liu, 54, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion after he helped write Charter 08, a bold call for political change and democracy in China released in 2008.

"If the democracy, the rule of law and the human rights that we old comrades have struggled for our entire lives is cast aside, then our hearts will never be at peace," the letter said.

"We believe that we must propose to the incumbent leaders that the legal issues and the evidence of conviction in the Liu case made by the Beijing court be reviewed."

The letter was posted last week on the website of the Independent Chinese Pen Centre, a group of writers that Liu once headed.

The signatories could not immediately be reached by AFP on Monday.

However, the family of He Fang, one of the four, confirmed that the elderly academic had signed the letter.

"He signed the letter, but he does not want to take any calls on this," a woman at He's home who identified herself only as a "family member" told AFP by telephone.

Liu has appealed the conviction, according to his lawyers.

The four signatories to the letter were all in their 80s and 90s.

Besides Hu and He, who is an honorary member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, they included Li Pu, a former deputy chief of the official Xinhua News Agency, and Dai Huang, a former Xinhua senior reporter.

Liu's conviction drew widespread criticism overseas including from the European Union and the United States. Liu's lawyers said the verdict violated China's own constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech.

"If the judicial authorities violate the constitution, don't understand the party's history, cannot draw a difference between right and wrong and manufacture wrong and unjust cases, then the image of the nation will be seriously tarnished," the letter said.

China's two-systems policy attacked
Hong Kong (UPI) Jan 25, 2009 - A leading Hong Kong human-rights organization has questioned the legality of trying and sentencing democracy activist Zhou Yongjun in a mainland court.

Zhou, 42, was arrested in Hong Kong in late April, questioned by police for 48 hours and then handed over to mainland police in Suining, the town where his parents live in Sichuan province.

He claimed he was on his way to see his aging parents but was travelling on a false Malaysian passport to avoid detection. Zhou, who has been living in the United States, was fearful because he had spent several years on three occasions in Chinese jails.

Last week Zhou's worst fears came to pass when he was sentenced to nine years in jail by a court in Sichuan province for alleged financial fraud supposedly committed during a trip to Hong Kong in September 2008. Amnesty International condemned the trial as politically motivated and an attempt to punish him for his democracy activities.

Zhou's trial was highly controversial because of the lack of transparency about the financial fraud, which he denies, and because he was a high-profile democracy activist. As a young Beijing law student Zhou was a leader of the student movement in China during the April 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in which he took an active part.

The handing over of Zhou as well as his trial and sentencing makes a mockery of the Chinese policy, according to Law Yuk-kai, executive director of the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, a non-governmental organization set up in 1995 to promote all aspects of human rights.

"We would not send people back to mainland China, especially for something which was supposed to be done in Hong Kong," he told the British Broadcasting Corp. "And we have jurisdiction over the criminal activities here, not mainland China."

The handling of Zhou's case breaches China's policy of keeping separate the judicial systems of mainland China and Hong Kong, a former British colony.

The United Kingdom handed Hong Kong back to communist China when the treaty expired in 1997. During the handover, China pledged its "one country, two systems" policy for many social, economic, judicial and political activities.

At the time of his arrest, Albert Ho, of the Hong Kong opposition Democratic Party, questioned the handing over of Zhou to mainland police. "Mr. Zhou was stopped in Hong Kong, refused entry but, instead of being sent back to the place of origin or the port of embarkation, was sent back to the mainland without his consent. That is extremely alarming to the people of Hong Kong."

Zhou's lawyers told media that they would appeal the nine-year sentence.

According to biographical information about Zhou on the democracy for China Web site www.standoffattiananmen, he was leading a group of students into Tiananmen Square to lay a wreath for the discredited former reformist leader and student sympathizer Hu Yaobang who had died a week earlier.

At the end of Hu's funeral, Zhou was one of the three students who staged an emotional plea while kneeling on the stairs of the Great Hall of People in front upwards 50,000 people in and around the square. He and several other student leaders pleaded with the communist authorities to talk with them about reforms and to end political corruption.

Police arrested later him in June and he spent nearly two years in jail. Upon his release he made his way to Hong Kong and then on to the United States. In 1998 he went back to China "apparently for underground activities", the Web site said. He was again jailed for another three years.

In 2002 Zhou returned to the United States. His next trip to Hong Kong in 2008 was where the alleged fraud was committed.

According to a report by the London-based Times-Online, the fraud case surrounds a complaint by the Hang Seng Bank in Hong Kong. The bank was suspicious about request for the transfer of money out of an account registered to a Mr. Wang Xingxiang -- the name in Zhou's fake passport. The signature on the transfer form for HK$6 million, equivalent to around $772,000, did not match that of the original account holder.

Police were, therefore, looking for Wang Xingxiang on charges of money laundering. Zhou was arrested because he was ostensibly that person.

The Times article noted that Zhou said he was the victim of bad luck and mistaken identity. He claimed to have got the fake passport through an immigration agency, a common practice among Chinese exiles because Beijing refuses to renew their passports.

Zhou's trial started in November, a day after President Barack Obama ended a state visit to China, the Times observed.

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