World Tibet Network News Monday, April 20, 1998

BEIJING, April 19 (AFP) - With Sunday's departure to the United States by Wang Dan, a leader of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, China's dissident movement lost its last member possessing historic stature.

The following are the best-known dissidents still held in the country's prisons or labour camps, some of whom some may be candidates for similar releases on medical parole in the future:

-- Liu Nianchun, 48, arrested in May 1995 for having signed a petition demanding the right to organise independent trade unions. Condemned to three years in a camp for re-education through labour, he is being held at the Tuanhe camp, 10 kilometres (six miles) south of Beijing.

According to his wife, he has been diagnosed as suffering from high blood pressure as well as intestinal and mouth problems.

-- Gao Yu, 54, a journalist, arrested in October 1993 and sentenced later to six years in prison for having "revealed state secrets" abroad, while she was working for a Hong Kong newspaper.

According to her son, Gao -- held at the Yanqing prison hospital north of Beijing -- suffers from cardiac problems, high blood pressure and allergies to several kinds of medecine.

She received the first Guillermo Can prize, awarded by UNESCO to defenders of press freedoms, last year.

-- Li Hai, 43, a philosophy researcher at Beijing University. Arrested in May 1995 and sentenced in December the following year to nine years in prison for having revealed state secrets.

He is being held at Beijing's Chaoyang prison.

-- Liu Xiaobo, 41, a literary critic. Sentenced to three years in a labour camp in October 1996 for having written a letter demanding the opening of a political dialogue between Beijing and Tibet's top spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

He is being held at a camp in the northeastern city of Dalian.

-- Chen Longde, 40, sentenced to three years in a labour camp for having signed petitions calling for the release of prisoners of conscience.

A victim of abuse by a prison guard, he threw himself from a second-storey window to escape alleged torture and has been given inadequate medical treatment for his recovery from injuries sustained in the fall, according to his family.

He is being held at the Longyou camp in eastern Zhejiang province.

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