The New York Times

Wednesday, March 29, 2000

Ex-Official Challenges China's Limits on Speech

By ERIK ECKHOLM

BEIJING, March 28 -- A former senior official who spent seven years in prison for sympathizing with democracy advocates has challenged the authorities to abide by the Constitution and stop restricting his freedom to speak out.

The former official, Bao Tong, 67, has risked re-arrest over the last year and a half with calls for democratic changes and a re-appraisal of the 1989 student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, which were officially classified as counterrevolutionary and violently crushed.

On March 13, as China worked to fend off an American-sponsored resolution to censure China's rights record at a United Nations meeting in Geneva, Mr. Bao wrote a new letter to the Chinese authorities. It was distributed to reporters today by Human Rights Watch, a group based in New York.

In the letter, Mr. Bao contended that the Government had whitewashed its human rights record in a recent report and that based on his own treatment he felt that he had to set the record straight.

"I am an old man, and I have neither fear nor illusions," Mr. Bao wrote. "But I feel obligated to confront such violation of a citizen's civil rights, even if that means my own imprisonment."

By continuing his lonely advocacy here -- most dissidents are in prison or in exile -- Mr. Bao is taking a serious risk. Although he theoretically regained his rights as a citizen in May 1998, security agents have warned him eight times since then that his statements "endangered state security," he said in the letter.

Last year, Mr. Bao granted many interviews to foreign journalists despite harassment and warnings from officials. In the new letter, he said his treatment had worsened in recent months, with six agents following him day and night.

"They come with me when I accompany my granddaughter to school and when I go to the hospital, bank or shops," he wrote. "They watch very closely to see who I talk to, what I do and what I say."

Mr. Bao challenged the authorities to compare his treatment with the right to free speech enshrined in China's Constitution and laws, and urged the United Nations Human Rights Commission, which is meeting in Geneva, to note the inconsistency. In 1989, when student demonstrations in favor of democratic change erupted, Mr. Bao was a senior aide to the Communist Party chairman at the time, Zhao Ziyang, helping him plan economic reforms.

In late May 1989, less than two weeks before the army crushed the demonstrations and Mr. Zhao was ousted for being too soft, Mr. Bao was arrested and imprisoned, ostensibly for sharing information about the coming crackdown with the students.

After seven years in prison, he had two years of virtual house arrest with no political rights. But in May 1998, when that probation ended, he defiantly spoke to foreign reporters, saying China urgently needed political change. He has been under police scrutiny ever since, required to live in a monitored apartment.