BEIJING — A Chinese court on Monday abruptly scheduled a trial for an activist who criticized the government's response to last year's devastating Sichuan earthquake, giving his lawyer only one day to prepare and prompting him to mount an immediate legal challenge.

Huang Qi's lawyer Mo Shaoping said the judge told him Monday that the trial would start Tuesday morning, leaving less than 24 hours for Mo to look through the indictment and build a defense against the charge of possessing state secrets.

"This is a totally illegal process," Mo said. "They are intentionally creating difficulties."

He said the law requires that the defendant be informed 10 days before the trial starts, while lawyers need to be told at least three days ahead. His assistant has gone to the Wuhou District Court to see if the trial date can be changed.

"If it cannot be changed, we will lodge a strong protest because this is unfair and it deprives Huang Qi of his right to a defense," Mo said.

According to Mo, the judge said he had difficulty reaching Huang's lawyers and family.

Both Mo and Zeng Li, Huang's wife, said their telephone numbers and addresses are recorded in court documents.

"I've been trying to reach the court for weeks but no one would give me the time of day," said Zeng. She said she was also told of the trial Monday morning and was not sure if she would be allowed to attend.

Telephones at the court in Chengdu, Sichuan's capital, rang unanswered Monday.

Huang, one of the country's most outspoken dissidents, posted articles on his website 64Tianwang.com criticizing the government's response to the May 12 quake after visiting affected areas and meeting parents who lost their children.

While independent reporting was allowed right after the magnitude-7.9 temblor, access was shut down within days and public complaints by parents who blamed corruption and shoddy construction on school collapses that killed their children became an extremely sensitive issue.

Zeng said Huang's arrest was a result of his work in the quake zone.

"This is because he went to the disaster area a couple of times. He reported on the shoddy schools and reported about the appeals of the parents of the students. So he was arrested and charged with possessing state secrets," she said.

The ill-defined charge is often used to clamp down on dissent and send activists to prison.

Human rights groups said Huang was forcibly taken away by three unknown men on June 10 and police informed his mother six days later that he had been detained.

Zeng said police told Huang in October that if he stopped his activist work, he would be released.

Mo said police made no mention of the earthquake in their indictment proposal, adding that he was not allowed to reveal the contents of the document.

Earlier this decade, Huang, 45, served a five-year prison sentence on subversion charges linked to politically sensitive articles posted on his Web site.

Since his release in 2005, Huang has supported a wide range of causes from aiding families of those killed in the 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing, to publicizing the complaints of farmers involved in land disputes with authorities.