The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said Huang's lawyers have received the judgment, a week after the ruling was handed down, and requested an appeal at a court in the provincial capital of Chengdu.

Huang was last week sentenced to three years in prison for possessing three articles claimed to be state secrets, according to his lawyer Mo Shaoping.

The Hong Kong-based center said Huang's wife Zeng Li has applied for medical parole since Huang was found to have a tumor.

Mo has insisted Huang's innocence, claiming the articles had been published and should not be deemed secrets, and that there was lack of evidence that Huang had knowledge of the articles.

Huang, 46, founded the ''6.4 Tianwang'' website in 1999 to commemorate the victims in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest and promote human rights in China. He was arrested in 2000 for ''inciting subversion of state power'' and sentenced to five years in prison in 2003, according to his website.

After the Sichuan earthquake last year, which left more than 88,000 dead or missing, Huang launched an investigation into and criticized the shoddy buildings for burying victims who might otherwise have survived the disaster. He was arrested in June last year.

==Kyodo