Published by: World Tibet Network News, Sunday, October 27, 1996

BEIJING, Oct 24 (AFP) - Wei Jingsheng, awarded the Andrei Sakharov human rights prize Thursday, is an expanding thorn in the side of Beijing's communist government and its moves to raise China's international prestige.

Although he has spent only six months in the last 17 years as a free man, his unofficial title of father of China's democracy movement has grown with every official charge of subversion and counter-revolution.

Even Beijing's decision to discredit Wei by putting his December 1995 conviction for conspiring to overthrow the government on the evening news only served to broadcast his name across the nation.

The awarding of the Sakharov prize by the European Parliament will infuriate China, which has sought to pre-empt Wei's numerous nominations for the Nobel peace prize by dismissing him as a "common criminal."

Freed in September 1993 after more than 14 years in jail for his active role during the Democracy Wall movement of 1978 and 1979, Wei was re-arrested six months later and held incommunicado for the best part of two years.

He was formally charged on November 21, 1995 and given a new 14-year sentence after a five-hour trial in mid-December.

Wei, who marks his 46th birthday this year, was a fervent champion of democracy from 1978, referring to it as the "fifth modernisation," a reference to the four other "modernisations" backed by the Chinese Communist Party -- agriculture, industry, science and technology and defence.

He wrote a series of "dazibaos" or big-character posters, on the famous Democracy Wall, a short walk to the west of Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

These became increasingly outspoken against the regime and, in particular, the man who had just resurfaced in the post-Mao era to rule the world's most populous country, Deng Xiaoping.

Wei's last and most critical poster, "Democracy or New Despotism", led to his arrest on March 29, 1979 and conviction for counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement.

Known as "Deng's prisoner" in Beijing, he was freed in September 1993 during China's unsuccessful bid to host the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, but he again defied the regime by returning to an active campaign in favour of democracy and human rights.

"I am prepared to do again what I did in 1978," said the tireless campaigner after his release, "but better."

Those who met with Wei in the many interviews he granted during his brief respite from jail were impressed by the unfaltering strength of his convictions, expressed clearly and firmly by the activist.

A number of his prison writings were published in the foreign press, including a controversial commentary on Tibet that was addressed personally to Deng.

The final straw came when Wei met with US Undersecretary of State for Humanitarian Affairs John Shattuck in February 1994, on the first day of an official visit to China.

He was taken back into detention on April 1, 1994, and has remained there since.

Wei was born in 1950, several months after the founding of the people's republic, the son of an army officer.

Like millions of other young Chinese, he responded enthusiastically to Mao Zedong's call to "bombard the headquarters" -- or the official establishment -- during the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976.

He became a Red Guard and, when the tide turned against the fanatical youths, Wei fled to the eastern province of Anhui where he was intercepted and sent for rural "re-education" in the backward far-northwestern province of Qinghai.

He re-emerged in 1978 during the so-called "Beijing Spring," securing a job as an electrician in the capital's zoo.

No longer harbouring any illusions about the nature of the Chinese government, Wei from that year took up the cause of democracy.