Published by: World Tibet Network News Tuesday, November 18, 1997

DHARAMSALA, 18 November - His Holiness the Dalai Lama, on a visit to New Delhi, said that he appreciated the release of Wei Jingsheng, China's best-known democracy activist.

Reacting to the same news, T.C. Tethong, the minister of the Department of Information and International Relations of the Tibetan Administration based in Dharamsala, said, "We are delighted with the release of Wei Jingsheng," T.C. Tethong was reacting to the news which erupted on the TV screens across the world that Wei Jingsheng, the father of China's fledgling and faltering democracy movement, was on Sunday suddenly and quietly sent packing on a Detroit-bound plane for medical treatment in the United States.

"We feel that this is the result persistent international pressure and also because of Jiang Zemin's recent state visit to the United States where President Clinton told him in no uncertain terms of America's unhappiness over China's continued trampling of human rights and imprisonment of those who express opinions contrary to the government's " said T.C. Tethong.

"We feel that this is a step in the right direction. We hope that China will build on this and release all prisoners of conscience not only in China but those in Tibet," the minister said.

The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy based in Dharamsala estimates that there are about 1019 political prisoners languishing in prisons in Tibet. Elisabeth Cossor, the associate researcher at the centre, hoped that Wei Jingsheng's release would be the first step in China's efforts in adhering to international standard of justice with regard to political detainnees.

Wei Jingsheng is an implacable foe of the late Chinese patriarch, Deng Xiaoping, who first imprisoned the democracy activist in 1979 when he put up a dazi bao or big-character poster which demanded that China be given a fifth modernization: democracy. In his big-character poster, Wei Jingshen argued that the four modernizations of agriculture, industry, science and education would be meaningless without democracy.

In the early 1990's Wei Jingsheng also wrote a letter to Deng Xiaoping calling for a more liberal official Chinese policy toward the issue of Tibet. He argued that China's hardline policy of repression in Tibet was forcing the Tibetans to "split" away China and if such a thing happened, Deng was squarely to be blamed.

For his relentless advocacy of democracy in China, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has repeatedly endorsed Wei Jingsheng's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.