AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Beijing

Updated at 4.02pm:
Chinese cyber-dissident Huang Qi, recently released after serving five years in prison for creating a politically sensitive website, has vowed to start it again, a report said on Tuesday.

"I will do my best to resume the Tianwang website," Huang told Radio Free Asia (RFA) after his release from jail in the southwestern province of Sichuan on Saturday.

"When it was first created it was for very few people. But I now realise that there are many like-minded people."

Huang, who was detained in 2000 and convicted of subversion in 2001, said he launched the website, www.6-4tianwang.com, to locate people who went missing in the crackdown on the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations on Tiananmen Square.

The protests were violently crushed by the Chinese government, with hundreds and perhaps a thousand people killed. The subject remains banned from the media.

Victims' families and human rights groups, citing eyewitnesses, claim the government buried or cremated the dead without notifying their families.

Huang said his website expanded far beyond its original scope as it attracted the attention of many people who suffered injustice in a country which provides people few channels to seek redress for official wrongdoing.

"We came into contact with many who had been wrongfully prosecuted or sentenced. ... Some of them had spent years appealing their cases; some had become homeless," said Huang, who had published some of the cases as well as articles critical of the government.

"We wanted to help the disadvantaged to fight for their basic human rights. It was also fighting corruption."

His legally registered site proved highly successful in helping a wide range of people, with Huang carrying out investigations himself, helping to rescue several girls abducted by traffickers, RFA said.

While in prison, Huang said he was repeatedly beaten by prison guards because he continued to appeal his conviction. He is seeking medical attention for head injuries.

Huang said the reason China did not have any political reform despite undergoing major economic reforms was the lack of a free flow of information, something his website tried to change.

"To sum it up, the root problem is China's political system," Huang said.

"The free flow of information is the most fundamental guarantor of freedom and democracy."

Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) awarded its Cyberfreedom Prize to Huang in June 2004.