Briton jailed for China protest

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A British man has been sentenced to serve six months in a Hong Kong jail after being found guilty of causing a public nuisance.

Matt Pearce, 33, a Bristol teacher living in Hong Kong, staged a protest against China's human rights record.

He hung banners on the Tsing Ma Bridge on 8 August last year - the opening day of the Beijing Olympics.

Pearce was found guilty of causing a public nuisance earlier this month but was cleared of a common assault charge.

In 2006, the veteran activist, who founded an organisation called International Action, was sentenced to 21 days in prison after dressing as Spiderman and scaling a giant television screen in the Central district of Hong Kong on the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square killings.

The sentence was later suspended for 18 months on appeal.

He was also convicted of causing a public nuisance after staging a protest in a horse costume at the Hong Kong races in 2004, again receiving a suspended jail sentence.

Earlier, Mr Pearce had insisted he was keen to continue to stage protests in Hong Kong regardless of the outcome of the latest trial.