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Both trials were adjourned before noon with no word on when they would resume.

Police tried to take a protest banner from a woman outside the Hangzhou court, but gave up after a scuffle with crowds, the Hong Kong rights group said.

Amnesty International said in a statement the two were "imprisoned solely for the exercise of their right to freedom of expression and association and they are prisoners of conscience."

In October, China signed the UN International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees freedom of expression and association.

China's most prominent exiled dissident, Wei Jingsheng, said during a visit to France recently he was starting a 24-hour hunger strike to protest against the trials.

In Hong Kong, the main pro-democracy lobby, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Movement of China, urged the release of Wang and Qin.

Speaking from Taipei, Wuer Kaixi, a leading voice in the 1989 pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests, said that the opposition party had "applied enormous pressure to the Chinese government."

"You can definitely see the fears that this crackdown could apply to the Chinese people," he said.

Washington has condemned Beijing's latest crackdown as a "serious step in the wrong direction." But China has angrily dismissed the criticism as outside interference. (8)

 

 

 

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