According to a BBC agency report, August 2006, a Chinese campaigner who publicly campaigned against forced abortions has been imprisoned for so-called 'public order offences'. Mr. Chen Guangcheng received a sentence of four years and three months for what communist authorities termed "damaging property and organising a mob to disturb traffic". Mr Chen had exposed birth control officials in Shandong province violating family planning laws (Editors Note: These 'laws' are cosmetic political gestures, aimed largely at deflecting international scrutiny of violations generated by China's state controlled population policies. in reality at a local level such 'legislation' is deliberately ignored by local and regional government and population officials, who are sanctioned by the communist government to enforce a reduction in population levels). The trial lasted just two hours, with his lawyers arrested before it. One of those, Mr. Li Fangping, informed the BBC that Mr Chen had been represented, against his will, by two state-appointed lawyers in the closed-door proceedings. Meanwhile, Amnesty International said the activist had been denied a fair trial. Mr Chen's wife, who was not allowed to attend the trial, said she was shocked by the verdict. "I thought they were going to sentence him even though he's innocent, but I never expected such a heavy sentence," she told Reuters news agency. Mr Li said he was outraged by the sentence. "The whole justice system has acted totally illegally in Chen Guangcheng's case," she told the Associated Press news agency. The charges against Mr Chen concern on campaigns that occurred after he was arrested in September 2005. He had charged local health workers in Linyi, in Shandong, of forcing people to have late-term abortions or sterilisations in order to enforce the one-child policy. His allegations were covered in the international media, including an article in Time Magazine which claimed some 7,000 people had been sterilised against their will in the province.