Published by: World Tibet Network News, Monday, October 14, 1996

by Gilles Campion

BEIJING, Oct 14 (AFP) - China's communist government can claim a new victory over the country's weakened dissident movement with the flight into exile of Wang Xizhe, analysts said Monday.

Some even said the renowned Public Security Bureau and police may even have had a tacit role in Wang's disappearance from his southern China home last week and his escape to Hong Kong.

Wang arrived in the British territory at the weekend and went into hiding while support groups took steps to get him political asylum in the United States.

The 47-year-old veteran dissident disappeared after the announcement that his fellow opponent Liu Xiaobo had been sentenced to three years in a reeducation through labour camp. Both had signed a letter calling for self-determination for Tibet.

But one diplomat commented: "His wife warned him of Liu's arrest last Tuesday. We find it difficult to understand why the police, if they really wanted to arrest him, would have given him so much time to disappear.

"I think he had become embarrassing for the regime and they preferred to neutralise him by letting him go rather than draw criticism by putting him in prison."

The diplomat added that Liu had to be arrested and sent to jail as an example for expressing criticism on the sensitive international topic of Tibet.

Robin Munro, the Hong Kong director of Human Rights Watch/Asia, disagreed with the theory. "It is possible, but I personally doubt it," he said.

"I don't believe there is a government policy to encourage or to allow that. There is no evidence for that.

"Now that he is out, they might just be feeling 'well, good riddance, one dissident has left.'

"They probably like to have dissidents in jail like Wei Jingsheng, as it serves as a warning to other dissidents. Equally they are not unhappy to see dissidents leave because quite often they are less effective outside the country."

Wang Xizhe, who has been involved in pro-democracy campaigns for 22 years, will be an enormous loss to the dissident movement in China.

Dissident leader Wei Jingsheng, 46, was sentenced to 14 years in jail at the end of 1995 after being found guilty of sedition.

Wang Dan, 27, one of the leaders of the 1989 student democracy movement in Tiananmen Square, risks a seven-year jail term for attempted sedition. He has been detained in virtually complete secrecy for 17 months and is expected to be tried in the next week.

Munro said Wang Dan's trial should start very soon so that it is completed before a visit to China in early November by US Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

"The Chinese govenrment wants to send a very hard-line message to the US on dissident issues as they did in March 1994 when Christopher was humiliated," commented the human rights watchdog representative.

Before Christopher's last visit, the Chinese authorities detained several dissidents, including Wei Jingsheng.

"International pressure from governments has declined quite dramatically in the last year or two. It is clearly a trend.

"I think the Chinese government has welcomed this collapse of pressure and has seen it as a green light to go ahead and mop up what was left of the dissident movement."

According to Munro, democratic governments claim that the economic reforms progress in China will create greater human rights protection. "But the actual record of the last few years completely contradicts that theory."

He said: "The more confident the government becomes economically and vis a vis the West, the more it is using its newfound economic clout to threaten western countries with reduced access to the Chinese market if they continue to press human rights demands. And in effect, the theory of western governments is rather working in reverse."

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end of WTN 96/10/14 20:45 GMT

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