By Globe Staff

Boston Globe, July 22, 1997

Andrei Sakharov, Vaclav Havel, and the many other dissidents who spoke truth to Soviet power left a legacy worth remembering. Those stubborn, unrealistic men and women demonstrated a counterintuitive truth about tyranny: that in the contest between prisoners of conscience and their tormentors, the balance of power cannot be calculated by comparing the troops and weapons on each side. To do so is to fall for a great illusion.

Sad to say, the illusion lingers. The Communist rulers in Beijing imprison Wei Jingsheng, an advocate of democracy as lucid and brave as Sakharov, and Washington acts as though acquiescence is the best policy.

A common excuse given for this stance is the argument that Chinese leaders are impervious to outside pressure, and if the United States squanders its limited influence with them on the plight of the imprisoned Wei, it will become harder than ever to persuade them to stop selling missiles and nucle ar materials to Iran and Pakistan.

But engagement with Beijing need not mean that President Clinton must surrender America's moral and political obligation to labor for the freedom of Wei, just as Clinton's predecessors once used detente as an opportunity to ask Soviet leaders to release Sakharov. It is precisely because Clinton has delinked the issue of human rights from normalized trade relations with Beijing that he should feel entitled to ask China's leaders for a gesture of good will such as the release of Wei.

Wei's health has deteriorated gravely under the cruel conditions of his captivity in the Nanpu New Life Salt Works, a prison camp where he is beaten and denied medical treatment. Since the Communist Party leader and President Jiang Zemin is notoriously eager for a state visit to Washington in October, Clinton has a chance to save Wei's life by telling Jiang that by releasing the dissident he can remove his case from the summit agenda.

Someday, when the Communists are nothing but a bad memory in China, Chinese democrats will appreciate such an act of solidarity.