Four Chinese activists who allegedly disrupted public order through their involvement in campaigns to demand education equality and the public disclosure of officials' assets were on Friday given sentences from two to three and a half years in prison by a Beijing court.

Activists Zhao Changqing and Ding Jiaxi organized campaigns assembling crowds to disrupt public order using hot topics that the public care about, and those who implemented the activities hampered and resisted police law enforcement, according to a verdict sent by Zhao's lawyer Wang Fu to the Global Times.

Ding was sentenced to three and a half years in prison; Zhao was sentenced to two and a half years, according to a statement posted on the official Sina Weibo account of Haidian district court in Beijing. Li Wei and Zhang Baocheng were sentenced to two years in prison.

  Police said participants in Chaoyang Park in Beijing held banners, shouting slogans, attracting a crowd of onlookers and disrupting social order on January 27, said the verdict.

Sui Muqing, Ding's lawyer and Wang Fu, Zhao's lawyer, said Friday that they will lodge an appeal and insisted that their clients are not guilty.

Zhao was arrested and sentenced to jail under the charge of "inciting subversion of the State" in 2003.

The defense lawyers have questioned the charge. "The concept of 'disrupting public order' is very flexible and difficult to identify," said Sui.

A Beijing court on April 10 rejected the appeal of Xu Zhiyong, an activist and human rights lawyer, who was given a four-year sentence in prison for assembling a crowd to disrupt order. Xu also focused on the issues of asset disclosure and equal access to education.

Xu organized rallies in public places such as outside the Ministry of Education from July 2012 to March 2013, said a court indictment in his first trial in February.

He claimed that they had been seeking education equality.

Xu and other activists' advocacy was not unreasonable, but the means they used to advocate it disrupted order in a public place, experts said.