(RTTNews) - A court in the Chinese city of Chengdu on Monday sentenced Huang Qi, an activist who tried to help parents of children killed in last year's devastating Sichuan earthquake, to three years in prison for "illegally holding state secrets".

However, the court did not provide any details about the nature of the state secrets in Huang's case. His sentencing came after a 10-minute hearing at Wuhou District People's Court in the city of Chengdu.

Huang's wife and lawyers said after the announcement of the verdict that Huang's sentencing was a case of state taking "revenge" for his involvement in the earthquake cases. They say that the so called secrets held by Huang was freely available on the internet.

Chinese authorities arrested Huang was taken into custody on 10th June, 2008, just weeks after a powerful earthquake of magnitude 8 struck in the southwestern Sichuan province, leaving nearly 87,000 dead or missing.

This is not the first time that Huang was awarded a jail sentence for championing for the rights of ordinary people. He has already served a five-year prison sentence on subversion charges linked to politically sensitive articles posted on his website.

Prior to his arrest in June, Huang had helped the parents of children killed in the quake to take legal action against local authorities, alleging that the sub-standard construction of the school buildings contributed heavily to the quake's death toll. He was also critical of the way relief work was organized through articles posted on his website.

At least 5,335 children were estimated killed or missing in the quake, which also left a further 546 students disabled. Most of the children were killed after the school buildings they were in at the time of the quake collapsed.

Earlier, the Chinese government has admitted that nearly 14,000 schools in the region collapsed or were damaged by the devastating magnitude 8 earthquake. The deaths of the children in the earthquake had sparked a national outrage in China after it was alleged that many of the schools in the quake-hit region were poorly constructed.

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