As the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown approaches, Chinese authorities have intensified the suppression of human rights activists across the country. Amnesty International has documented at least one hundred cases of activists who have been detained briefly or faced violence from authorities in 2009 as they defended land rights, housing rights and labour rights and signatories of the Charter 08, a petition calling for legal and political reforms, continue to face questioning. Several of these cases are related to the surveillance of activists ahead of the anniversary.
In the first four months of 2009, Amnesty International documented at least four cases of lawyers who were threatened with violence by the authorities as they defended their clients, at least ten cases where lawyers were hindered from meeting or representing clients, and at least one case in which a lawyer has been detained for doing his work. Lawyers recently have been threatened with denial of the licenses in retaliation for their work on rights defense cases.
To follow are details of several individuals detained in connection with the 1989 protests who are scheduled to be released from prison in the coming years:
Jiang Yaqun was in his forties at the time of his arrest. He was originally sentenced to a suspended death sentence for ‘counter-revolutionary sabotage’. After receiving three sentence reductions, he is scheduled for release from Beijing’s Jinzhong Prison in October 2014.
Li Yujun was originally sentenced to death with a 2-year reprieve for arson, and is detained in Beijing No. 2 Prison. After six sentence reductions, Li is due for release in November 2014.
Zhu Gengsheng was also convicted of ‘counter-revolutionary sabotage’ because he waved a flag while shouting “We win!” on a tank that was set on fire. Zhu was originally sentenced to death with a 2-year reprieve, and is currently jailed at Beijing No. 2 Prison. He has received five sentence reductions, and his scheduled release is due in April 2013.
The following individuals continue to be persecuted by the Chinese authorities for their human rights activism in connection with the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement
Huang Qi, was sentenced to five-years’ imprisonment for hosting an online discussion about the protests in Tiananmen Square. The ‘evidence’ against him included reference to an Amnesty International document about the Tiananmen crackdown which had been posted on his web-site. He was released on 4 June 2005. Following his release, he continued to maintain his website and his human rights work and was detained again in June 2008, apparently for his assistance to five families whose children died in the Sichuan Earthquake last year.
Qi Zhiyong, who was left disabled by a gunshot injury during the 1989 Tiananmen violence, told reporters in a text message on 15 April that he had been detained by the police. It is believed that his detention is associated with the 20th anniversary of the death of Hu Yaobang. Hu’s death marked the beginning of the pro-democracy protests.
Zhou Yongjun, an exiled student leader of the 1989 pro-democracy protests, offers yet another example of arbitrary detention. Zhou Yongjun was sentenced to two-years’ imprisonment for his involvement in the 1989 pro-democracy protests. When he was released, he was exiled to the United States. He returned to China in 1998 when he was sent to Re-education Through Labour for another three years. In a recent attempt to re-enter China via Hong Kong last October, he was again detained by the Chinese authorities in Shenzhen. According to his sister, the Chinese authorities denied any repeated detention of Zhou Yongjun. However, international media including the Associated Press reported in May 2009, that Zhou Yongjun had been formally charged with fraud.