China arrest "internet dissident"

Officials in south-west China have arrested a man who ran an internet web-site on charges of subversion.

The man, Huang Qi has been accused of using the internet to distribute information about dissidents, and the violent suppression of pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989. Mr Huang was apparently arrested on the eve of the eleventh anniversary of the protests. Subversion is a crime which is often used by the authorities to sentence dissidents to jail terms of ten years or more.

The BBC Beijing correspondent says the case shows the determination of China's communist leadership to control information being distributed via the internet and also the sensitivity which still surrounds the 1989 protests.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service