Chinese authorities should hold an open and independent inquiry into the 1989 violent military crackdown on peaceful demonstrators in and around Tiananmen Square, Amnesty International said today.
The Chinese government has thwarted any attempts to shed light on the military crackdown that resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries in June 1989. In the lead up to the twentieth anniversary of the protests, the authorities have even intensified a current crackdown on activists and lawyers.
The Chinese government has not made official figures public, but several non-governmental organizations estimate that at least 20 and maybe as many as 200 individuals remain in detention for their involvement in the 1989 pro-democracy protests.
“The National People’s Congress has within its powers the ability to lead the way in calling for an account of all those who died, those who were imprisoned and those who remain in prison still as a result of the crackdown,” said Amnesty International in an open letter sent to Wu Bangguo, the Chairman of the National People’s Congress of China, on 13 May 2009.
“A number of people who remain in prison were convicted of ‘counter revolutionary’ crimes that were removed from the Chinese Criminal Code in 1997,” said Roseann Rife, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Deputy Director. “The Chinese authorities should immediately release these prisoners as a first step towards accountability.”
Not all of those who have been imprisoned for their association with the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement actually participated in the protests 20 years ago. The Chinese authorities’ ongoing suppression of public discussion of the events means that many have been sentenced to imprisonment after 1989 simply for exercising their right to freedom of expression, for example, by hosting online discussions or posting poems commemorating the crackdown on the Internet.
Imprisonment is not the only method that the Chinese authorities use to stifle public debate of the 1989 events. The prominent leaders of the Tiananmen Mothers group, Ding Zilin and Jiang Peikun are frequently subjected to police harassment and arbitrary detention.. In May they were forbidden from attending a mourning ceremony that 50 other members of the group were allowed to attend, after they promised the Ministry of State Security that no outsiders, especially journalists, present in the gathering.
At the launch of the Amnesty International Annual Report, Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan called on China to sign and ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Although the Chinese government’s recent initiative in launching the National Human Rights Action Plan, which has provisions to eradicate unlawful detention and protect human rights guaranteed in the Chinese Constitution, was welcomed by Amnesty International, the Plan’s success hinges on the actual implementation.
“In the midst of a global economic downturn, the Chinese government has demonstrated its readiness to take up leadership in stabilizing the world economic system. When it comes to the protection of human rights, however, the Chinese government has consistently failed to live up to the world’s expectations. The number of people still in prison for their actions in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago is testament to the lack of commitment to human rights that still prevails in China,” said Roseann Rife.