Chinese who risk their lives to protest

As Western protestors follow the Olympic torch from London to Paris to San Francisco, the people who are truly taking a risk to bring the Chinese government to account are the Chinese activists toiling at home. In the eyes of state media they are destructive malcontents, hell-bent on ruining the Beijing Olympics. To those outside the country, who care about human rights abuse across China and Tibet, they are invaluable sources of information that would never be reported otherwise.

Hu Jia, a Beijing-based activist, was arrested last week and sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison. A graduate of the prestigious Beijing School of Economics, Hu rose to international attention as a critic of China's handling of the Aids crisis. After 10 years of political activism, however, it was his questioning of the

Olympics that proved the last straw for the authorities.

In September 2007 Hu and the human rights lawyer Teng Biao wrote a letter to the Chinese Communist Party in which they said that China was unfit to hold the Games. "Please consider whether the Olympic Games should coexist with religious persecution, labour camps, modern slavery, identity discrimination, secret police and crimes against humanity," they wrote. "Having the Olympics hosted in a country where human dignity is trampled on will not honour its people or the Olympic Games."

Teng Biao (left) is no stranger to intimidation and incarceration himself, having wound up in various jails for giving legal advice and representation to groups who would otherwise have no voice in China. Migrant workers, ethnic minorities, labourers mutilated in factory accidents - Teng's clients are the 'untouchables' in China's modern caste system.

"People in China cannot speak out for fear of repression," an Amnesty International