China raids legal aid office,jails environmentalist

A Chinese legal aid organisation in Beijing was shut down for non-payment of taxes on Friday, while a Chinese environmental activist and his daughter have been sentenced for leaking state secrets related to a uranium mine.

Although there is no link between the two cases, they show how China is trying to tighten control over politically-related activities in a sensitive year, when it marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic.

The office of the Open Constitution Initiative, or Gongmeng, a civil rights organisation, was raided by authorities on Friday.

"Our stuff was taken. Computers, papers, casework and witness testimonies," said Xu Zhiyong, a law professor and rights advocate who co-founded the group.

"We're not sure of the reason. But we do take on many matters of public concern."

Made up of scholars, lawyers and rights advocates, Gongmeng has annoyed the government by a series of high-profile operations, including providing legal aid to victims of a tainted baby milk formula and a report criticising the government's handling of demonstrations across the Tibetan plateau last year.

The non-profit group, which was required to register as a company because it was not allowed to register as an NGO, faces a fine of more than 1.4 million yuan ($200,000), according to a tax office notice posted on Gongmeng's website.

Environmental activist Sun Xiaodi, a former uranium mine worker in Diebu, a county in the lush mountains in the remote province of Gansu, has campaigned against nuclear contamination and for labour rights for years, Human Rights in China said in a statement.

He has now been sentenced to two years of "re-education through labour". His daughter, Sun Dunbai, was given 1-½ years.

The conviction of Sun and his daughter, came as China's handling of state secrets and other sensitive matters has gained international attention with the detention on spying charges of employees working for Australian miner Rio Tinto.

Sun was found guilty of stealing information related to the mine and giving it to his daughter to supply to foreign organisations, Human Rights in China said.

"If the authorities have evidence that Sun Xiaodi and his daughter endangered state security, they should present it in an open and fair trial," executive director Sharon Hom said.

"Instead, they chose re-education through labour -- a non-transparent process of administrative punishment lacking procedural protections -- raising strong suspicions about their handling of these cases."

Niebu county is in Gannan, a heavily Tibetan area that has been under heavy security and mostly closed to foreigners since the Tibetan demonstrations of March 2008.

BEIJING, July 17 (Reuters)