China mine owner gets life over death of reporter

BEIJING, Jun 28 (Reuters) A Chinese court has jailed a coal mine owner for life for ordering thugs to beat up a journalist who died from brain injuries, the official Xinhua news agency said today.

Lan Chengzhang, who worked for the Beijing-based China Trade News, died in January after thugs hired by Hou Zhenrun beat him, a colleague and their taxi driver at Hou's colliery in the northern province of Shanxi.

The Intermediate People's Court in Shanxi's Linfen city handed down the life sentence yesterday, Xinhua said. Five accomplices were jailed for between five and 15 years.

The court ruled that the six should pay Lan's family more than 300,000 yuan (,000) in compensation, Xinhua said.

Another man was jailed for one year for harbouring the suspects.

Officials in Shanxi, which produces a quarter of China's coal, have said Lan, 35, was not an accredited reporter and suggested he might have been seeking a payoff in return for not reporting problems at the unlicensed mine.

But the case still aroused nationwide uproar and prompted President Hu Jintao to order a swift investigation.

China's coal-mining industry is the world's deadliest with 4,746 workers killed in accidents in 2006, as colliery owners pushed production beyond safety limits in face of soaring coal prices driven by the booming economy.

Mine owners and in some cases colluding local officials tend to cover up fatal accidents when they happen.

To that end many would bribe journalists with hush money to avoid an official crackdown, spawning an army of ''fake reporters'' who extort bribes from the mines by threatening exposure.

REUTERS SLP HT1300