After being detained on March 28, 2009 and later sentenced to five years in prison in February of this year for “inciting subversion of state power,” Tan Zuoren’s appeal has been denied.  On June 9, the Sichuan Provincial High People’s Court announced during a twelve minute hearing that it was upholding its verdict of five years in prison and three years of deprivation of political rights against Tan Zuoren.  Tan's independent investigation into the collapse of school buildings that led to over 5,000 student deaths during the Sichuan earthquake disaster brought about his conviction.  Tan had discovered that the collapses were largely due to shoddy school construction with many buildings lacking the supports or emergency exits necessary to prevent such a catastrophe in the event of a natural disaster. The apparent gross violation of specific building codes has caused much of the public to call on the government to do a full investigation, but so far there has been little if any effort from Beijing to pursue the matter further.  (Read more after the jump)

Despite Tan's initial hearing’s focus on the information he had gathered about the school construction, later the focus switched to his activities concerning the Tiananmen Square massacre; he posted an online diary in 2007 on an overseas democracy website and also had contact via email with exiled student leader Wang Dan. No doubt the charges brought against Tan Zuoren are a combination of these two things in order to afford him the maximum sentence and to discourage others from digging too deeply into the causes of China's tragedies.