World Tibet Network News Saturday, June 13, 1998

By Paul Eckert

BEIJING, June 13 (Reuters) - The parents of a student killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre called on President Clinton on Saturday to take Chinese leaders to task on human rights when he visits later this month.

In a letter to Clinton, Ding Zilin and her husband Jiang Peikun urged the U.S. president to press China to release unconditionally its thousands of political prisoners and to re-evaluate the army killings of June 4, 1989.

The couple also criticized Clinton's decision to attend a welcoming ceremony at the edge of the vast square where their son Jiang Jielian, a 17-year-old high school student, was gunned down along with hundreds of other pro-democracy demonstrators.

``To hold a ceremony at such a time and place greatly hurts the feelings of freedom-seeking Chinese people and especially the feelings of relatives of the June 4 dead,'' the couple wrote.

Paraphrasing Clinton's words to Chinese President Jiang Zemin during a summit in Washington last October, they urged the U.S. president to ``stand on the right side of history'' in pressing Beijing to reassess its official verdict that the Tiananmen protests were a counter-revolutionary rebellion.

``Without a fair evaluation of June 4, the people and governments of the world, including those of the United States, cannot cast off the dark clouds of Tiananmen and there can be no talk of entering a so-called 'post-Tiananmen era','' they wrote.

Ding, an associate professor of philosophy at People's University in Beijing who often acts as a spokeswoman for the parents of those slain in the massacre, sent copies of the letter to the U.S. State Department and to Congress, she said.

Clinton, whose June 25-July 3 visit will make him the first U.S. head of state to set foot on Chinese soil since the 1989 crackdown, has said he will raise human rights with his communist hosts.

But Ding and Jiang -- who said they did not oppose Clinton's visit or his policy of engagement with China -- echoed the president's U.S. critics, saying he has been lenient with Beijing on human rights.

``But we are worried about the president's policy of appeasing the Chinese government on human rights, religious freedom, Tibet and other issues,'' the letter said.

``We particularly disapprove of the president's groundless praise of the Chinese government for improvements in the human rights situation,'' it said.

The Clinton administration ``should drop its 'human rights diplomacy' based on winning freedom for famous political prisoners in favor of demanding that China unconditionally release all political prisoners,'' they wrote.

China last November released veteran political prisoner Wei Jingsheng on medical parole, and in April did the same with jailed Tiananmen student leader Wang Dan. Both dissidents went into exile in the United States.

On Friday, Ding hailed Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro after he revealed he had made a silent tribute to massacre victims during a stroll across Tiananmen Square earlier in the week. She told reporters she hoped Clinton would make a similar gesture.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives asked Clinton to reconsider his decision to participate in a welcoming ceremony at Tiananmen Square. He has insisted that protocol demands he attends the Tiananmen welcoming ceremony, complete with a 21-gun salute.