SPEECH BY MRS SHANSHAN WEI-BLANK ON THE AWARD OF THE SAKHAROV PRIZE TO HER BROTHER, WEI JINGSHENG
Strasbourg, December 11, 1996
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen,
It is a particular honour for me to receive today, on behalf of my brother, We! jingsheng, the Sakharov human rights prize which has been awarded to him by the European Parliament. At the same time, however, I am very sad that my brother is still in prison and cannot be here today in person.
When my sister and another brother visited We! Jingsheng in prison on 20 November and he learnt that he had been awarded the prize, he was very surprised and pleased that this special honour was to be awarded from Europe - the cradle of human rights and democratic thinking.
He was particularly touched at the news that the award of the human rights prize had been decided by the European Parliament, thereby expressing the democratic aspirations of the people of Europe. Wei Jingsheng regards this honour as an act of encouragement and support on behalf of the people of Europe - not for himself, but for the whole human rights movement in China.
At a time when the human rights movement in China is under massive pressure from two sides simultaneously - repression from the Chinese government and a lack of response on the part of all the major. countries in the world - at a time when many in the human rights movement who used to be very active are beginning to have doubts about the value and the meaning of the Chinese human rights movement, and when many people are wondering what purpose their personal sacrifices actually serve, this encouragement by the European Parliament is immeasurably important: it will help many people recover their self-confidence and will motivate them to continue to play an active role in the movement for human rights.
It is for this reason that my brother has asked me today to express his particular appreciation for the support shown by the European Parliament and the citizens of Europe which it represents.
At this point I should also like to thank you personally, and on behalf of all my family. We are convinced that this prize will go a long way towards enabling Wei Jingsheng to recover from his illness and from the torture he suffered in prison, and that this recognition will be a major step towards securing his release.
Thank you very much.
I should like to take this opportunity of describing briefly how my brother became involved in the human rights movement and why he wrote the political essay 'Democracy - the fifth modernization' in 1978 which is why the Communist Party of China sentenced him to a total of thirty years' imprisonment.
In 1968 We! Jingsheng happened to return to the place where our family originates in the district of Chao in Anhui province, an area which forms part of the Jianghual plain, a granary famous throughout China for its fertile and productive soil.
Wei Jingsheng saw that the farmers were leading a peaceful life and had achieved a certain prosperity. No-one would have imagined that not long before people had died of starvation there. One day, when out for a walk, Wei Jingsheng was passing some ruins; he wondered why the houses had become derelict and covered with grass. A relative explained to my brother that in 1959 there was widespread famine in the district. At that time Mao Zedong was obsessed with the idea of achieving communism, in China and the whole world. As a result the farmers had to hand over all their grain to the state so that Mao could buy steel which he needed to make aeroplanes and guns 'to free the whole of mankind'. In Autumn of that year there was a record harvest and everything that the 'people's communes' had grown was taken away by the state. The farmers were forced to cat in canteens. Some families secretly kept some of the grain. When the party officials found out they were hanged for 'hoarding food', and others were beaten to d
eath.
The Winter had barely started when the canteens of the people's communes ran out of grain. Nowhere in the area was there anything to eat until the following Spring no bark or edible roots because, in their despair, the people had been looking for anything edible in order to survive. Gradually large numbers of these people, robbed by the Chinese government of their 'right to food', died of starvation. Senior party officials were deployed in the fight against 'hoarding food', searching through the farmers' homes. Even the headman of the village who had confiscated the farmers' last grain of corn eventually died. Not one inhabitant of the village was left alive. This famine,, caused by the government, led to the loss of over twenty million lives. And that is only the figure officially acknowledged by the government; the true figure is probably twice as high.
When my brother, who bad grown up in the capital, learnt of this he was very shocked. Nobody in Peking new anything 'about these events of ten years before. He suddenly realized that while he was living: an easy, carefree life in Peking, many of his fellow-countrymen, including distant relations, were in desperate straits.
These millions of people were dying virtually unnoticed. No-one was taking responsibility for it, and it was certainly not impossible that it would ever happen again. In view of these intolerable circumstances, following this event my brother began to record his political thoughts in a notebook in the hope that in this way he could help to find a way for the Chinese people to escape their poverty.
In 1978, when farmers used wall newspapers on the democracy wall in Peking to express their dissatisfaction at conditions and, for the first time in the history of the People's Republic of China democratic thoughts were made public, my brother saw this as an opportunity to publish on the democracy wall the thoughts he hadbeen committing to paper over the previous ten years. He called for freedom of the press so that the people could be informed of the dangers facing the country. He called for democratic elections so that irresponsible politicians could be replaced. He called for a multi-party system, respect for human rights and an independent judiciary.
This was a time when my brother was not only writing political articles advocating the political rights of his fellow-countrymen; he was also accommodating many farmers who had come to Peking to describe their conditions to the central government, with the result that his little home became a place of refuge. He often paid out of his own pocket for their tickets so that they could return to their villages.
Because of his peaceful political activities he then had to spend 14 years in prison. He was allowed virtually no contact with other people, and his health suffered considerably. When he was released in September 1993 he concentrated on two tasks: firstly, he began to write articles again calling for rights for the Chinese people; secondly, he supported victims of the political system who asked for his help, for example the families of victims of the massacre on Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989.
In 1979 democracy for China had been the dream of only a few. In 1989 it was the dream of millions of people demonstrating for freedom on the Square of Heavenly Peace.
Despite worldwide protests, China's rulers once again sentenced my brother to 14 years in prison, allegedly because he had been planning the overthrow of the government. Not once did We! Jingsheng call for, or use, violence. Claiming that he was planning a revolution in China is a lie. What is true is that in China anyone criticizing the government or calling for a multi-party system and democracy is denounced as an enemy of the people.
Dictatorial regimes - and I am referring not only to China - fear nothing more than publicity and legitimate criticism of the evils of their system.
On a number of occasions the Chinese government has announced that Wei Jingsheng is a criminal. But what crime has Wei Jingsheng committed? The Chinese government has made its views quite clear. In the early 1980s veteran party member Deng Xiaoping, at the time the most powe rful man in the country, delivered a famous speech which was published in 1986 as 'Document No.1'. In it he says: 'There are some who would have us exercise tolerance towards the dissidents. Wei Jingsheng is not a dissident. We! Jingsheng is an exponent of "bourgeois liberalism". Under no circumstances can we make any concessions to these people'.
Allow me at this point to ask what 'bourgeois liberalism' means? What article in the Chinese criminal code does the idea of 'bourgeois liberalism' violate? Deng Xiaoping went on to say: 'We have nothing to fear when people claim we have no human rights. We have arrested Wei Jingsheng and we shall certainly not releasehim again. So what? The foreigners will still do business with us, won't they?'
We may conclude from this that the leadership of the Communist Party is not only fully aware of We! Jingsheng's innocence and realises that imprisoning him is a quite clear vio lation of human rights. Yet although the rulers of China are denounced as murderers by others they are entirely unscrupulous because the only language they understand is: 'The main thing is that people do business with us; nothing else counts'.
This tyrannical behaviour is not only characteristic of Deng Xiaoping; it is in line with the methods employed by the Communist Party of China. The massacre of 4 June 1989 shocked the entire world, yet a year later the Chinese government felt it had acted properly, and that it would act more swiftly and more decisively in future in order to stifle such dissent at an earlier stage.
Although this inhuman regime has forced my brother to spend the best years of his life in Chinese jails he has always gently and rationally resisted any form of rule by force.
In 1993 when the anger of the Chinese people at the government could still clearly be felt in the wake of the 4 June massacre, We! Jingsheng repeatedly urged his friends who had been active in the democracy movement to hold fast to the principles of openness, reason and non-violence.
He said: 'If we want to rid China of the vicious circle in which violence from one side is countered with violence from the other side, it is quite wrong to do what the Communist Party did - seeking power through an underground movement and finally seizing control by force of arms. The Chinese democracy movement must adhere to the principles of openness, reason and nonviolence'.
Today, one year after my brother was once again sentenced, no-one in the West can ignore the fact that supporting the Communist regime is akin to supporting a gang of tyrants. Everyone should realise that tolerating the Communist Party's crazed oppression of the peaceful and reasonable efforts of Chinese democrats means that China will miss the chance of harmonious change.
The Chinese government should not be allowed to cause an enormous amount of social in justice which they use to fan hatred and cause social chaos. In areas like Tibet and Xinjiang (Nighur Autonomous Region), for example, the Chinese Government brutally represses minorities.
Yet throughout the world statesmen allow themselves to be deluded by the mirage of the great Chinese 'market of the future', focusing narrowly on trade with China. In this respect, Deng Xiaoping's words from the early 1980s still appear to hold true, unfortunately: 'The main thing is that theydo business with us'.
What distinguishes the European Parliament from European statesmen is that it has the courage to support justice, and this allows it to manifest the spirit of democracy which has left sucha powerful imprint on the people of Europe.
I hope very much that the governments of all the European states will once again reflect on the will of their citizens and take as their example the action of the European Parliament.
Once again, I should like to thank you on behalf of my brother, Wei Jingsheng.
Thank you very much.
