China's famous activist gets eight-year jail

BEIJING, Dec 26 (BBC): A prominent Chinese human rights activist, best known by the online alias Super Vulgar Butcher, has been jailed for eight years for subversion.

Wu Gan has been held since 2015, when authorities arrested or questioned hundreds of lawyers and activists.

Mr Wu said he planned to appeal against the sentence, seen as the harshest against a human rights activist since the crackdown began two years ago.

He is known for online campaigns designed to humiliate authorities.

Convicting Mr Wu, the court in Tianjin said he was "dissatisfied with the current system of governance, and that gradually produced thoughts of subverting state power".

The court also accused said he "spread fake information" and "insulted others online".

Mr Wu took up the causes of those he saw as victims of state power, including the case of a rape victim who had killed her assailant, a Communist Party official, by stabbing him with a fruit knife.

He also fought for justice on behalf of four men who claimed that they had been wrongfully jailed for murder.