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Partito Radicale Centro Radicale - 23 aprile 1998
Chine/dissidence/political prisoners

2000 'NO-NAMES' LANGUISH IN CHINA

Low Profile Political-Prisoners

by Steven Mufson

The Washington Post/The International Herald Tribune, Thursday, April 23, 1998

BEIJING - They are the prisoners without names, at least without internationally famous names. Yet, even after the release into exile of China's most famous dissidents - first Wei Jingsheng and now Wang Dan more than 2,000 people remain in jail for political crimes and misdemeanours Take the case of Zhao Changqing, a democracy activist from China's north-central Shaanxi Province, who tried to run for office in the local elections that have been widely hailed overseas as signs of political reform in China. Mr. Zhao was arrested a month ago and charged with endangering national security, human rights groups said. Mr. Zhao, a former student demonstrator in the 1989 protests that Mr. Wang led, had wanted to enter local elections to represent the nuclear factory he works for, but plant management ruled he was not qualified. He was detained for a month, released in February laid off from his job, and detained again. Another prisoner is Liu Nianchun, a principal sponsor of the League for the Protection of the Right

s of the Working People. In May 1995, he was detained after h look part in a campaign to petition the National People's Congress to prevent abuses of human rights. More than year later, on July 4, 1996, Mr. Liu was sentenced without trial to three years of what China calls "re-education through labor" at a labor camp in the remote northern province of Heilongjiang. Mr. Liu was tortured with electric batons, moved to a punishment cell, and denied water, according to inter- national human rights groups. His sentence was extended by six days for every month of his sentence- a total of 216 days - because he had not reformed his thought, human rights groups say, but Chinese officials have denied that. Recently, Mr. Liu disappeared altogether. When his wife went on her usual monthly visit in mid-October, prison officials told her he had been moved to a labor camp much closer to Beijing. When she arrived there, however, prison officials told her they had never heard of him. According to figures released by Beijing

, at the end of 1996 there were 2,026 people in Justice Ministry prisons for counter-revolutionary crimes. John Kamm, a California-based business consultant who works in China and campaigns to obtain information about Chinese political prisoners, estimates that human rights groups know the names of less than 10 percent of those people. The state- controlled Xinhua press agency reported in September that there were 230,000 people undergoing re- education, a 50 percent increase over the number the Chinese government gave to Mr. Kamm at the end of 1993. While the majority of those are ordinary criminals, unknown numbers of them are also there for political reasons. Shen Liangqing, a former public prosecutor from Anhui Province, was sentenced to two years of re-education through labor on April 4. Arrested in the days preceding the annual session of the National People's Congress on Feb. 25, Mr. Shen's arrest was believed to be linked not only to letters he had sent to the government criticizing the selection of

former Prime Minister Li Peng as chairman of the Congress, but also to his contacts with overseas human rights organizations and Western journalists. Mr. Shen, 35, was also detained in 1992 for 17 months. Liu Xiaobo, a renowned literary critic and former professor of literature who helped negotiate the safe departure of students from Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, is another person undergoing re- education through labor. Arrested on Oct. 7, 1996, Mr. Liu was sentenced the following day to three years in labor camps. His appeal, heard at the Dalian labor camp in March 1997, was rejected. Mr. Liu was arrested after he and Wang Xizhe, a veteran dissident from Guangzhou in southern China, wrote an open letter to the Chinese and Taiwan governments calling for a peaceful solution to the question of national reunification; asking that the Chinese Communist Party finally deliver on pledges of free speech and party pluralism; and pointing out that under China's constitution President Jiang Zemin should be impeache

d for having claimed that the People's Liberation Army was under the "absolute leadership of the Party" rather than the national legislature. Many of the people in jail have been there for years. Human Rights in China, a New York-based group run by Chinese exiles, has issued a list of 158 names of individuals from Beijing alone who are serving lengthy prison sentences for their participation in the 1989 pro-democracy movement. Most were ailed for "counter- revolutionary rebellion," even though in the more mild political climate today Chinese leaders use the phrase "political disturbances" to describe the 1989 protests. The list was primarily compiled by Li Hai, a former Beijing student, who was arrested in 1995 for making the list public and subsequently sentenced to a nine-year prison term. "The persons on this list, and the many other 'nameless' individuals jailed throughout China in connection with the 1989 crackdown might not be as internationally well-known as NU. Wang, but their lives and liberty are

equally as important," the group said this week.

 
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