The 50-year-old activist, who helped found the Free Labour Union of China (FLUC) in 1991, was detained in May 1992 and sentenced two years later on charges of organising and leading a counter-revolutionary organisation and inciting counter-revolutionary subversion. He was originally due for release in May 2007.
Liu told Agence France-Presse that his way of thinking had not changed and he still cared a great deal about the problems facing ordinary Chinese people. But since the court had additionally sentenced him to deprivation of political rights (meaning denial of freedom of speech and freedom of association) for four years after his release, he was unable to go into further detail.
Liu Jingsheng is one of Chinas leading dissidents. He joined the 1978 Democracy Wall movement and co-published, with his better-known dissident colleague Wei Jingsheng, the underground magazine Exploration. He and other dissidents established the China Freedom and Democracy Party (CFDP) two years after the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown on the pro-democracy movement and he was also a co-founder, through the FLUC, of Chinas independent trade union movement.
Lius 79-year-old mother told Agence France-Presse a few days before his release that she was not sure about the reason for his early release but that he had been suffering from high blood pressure, heart and stomach problems.
Another founder of the CFDP, Hu Shigen, received a 20-year prison sentence in 1994 and is currently in extremely poor health in prison. [See: Jailed veteran labour activist, Hu Shigen, reported in critical health]
Sources: Agence France-Presse, BBC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
29 November 2004