CHINA
New onslaught on democracy activists ON January 5, 1991, nine Chinese students were sentenced in a Beijing court for their role in the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989. Seven received jail terms of between two and four years, whilst two were pardoned for having confessed and repented. Other pro-democracy activists, to be tried over the next few weeks, are likely to receive much heavier sentences.
The following statement on the trials is taken from October Review, a magazine published in Hong Kong by sympathizers of the Fourth International. The statement was distributed as a leaflet during a rally in Hong Kong on December 9, 1990. The article has been modified somewhat for stylistic and space reasons.
From January 1979 to April 1981, Ren Wanding, Wei Jingsheng, Liu Qing, Wang Xizhe, He Qiu, Xu Wenli and many others were arrested and sentenced to up to 15 years. The semi-underground samizdat movement was thus forcibly repressed. Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming were penalized but not jailed; and they unceasingly used the limited unofficial channels to continue to champion political democratization and reform, and to carry out research work on Chinese society and theory for the Democracy Movement. They set up the first civilian "Beijing Social and Political Research Institute" and carried out massive works of theoretical research. The accumulation of many years of work provided the theoretical basis for the 1989 Democracy Movement.
It is Democracy Movement activists such as these that the CCP regime is now singling out for attack, with the aim of physically torturing them to the point of annihilation. Overseas solidarity develops
DOCUMENT
NE and a half years after repressing the 1989 Democracy Movement, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has started the prosecution and "trial" of a number of key democracy movement fighters. According to the Chinese constitution and the law, long-term detention and depriving the arrested of communication with their families are illegal. The so-called "public trials" and the appointment of defence lawyers are also obviously just a show.
The repression of the 1989 Democracy Movement by the CCP was itself criminal, against the people, against democracy. It was a counter-revolutionary action. Any defence of such action cannot, in the eyes of the people, be justified or legitimized. Therefore it is not necessary to quote in detail articles of the law to argue whether the current trials are legal or not
However, this does not mean that we should not take this series of trials seriously. On the contrary we should reveal the aims of the CCP regime and make a forcetul response.
The democracy movement activists are accused of "making counter-revolutionary propaganda" "inciting rebellion" and even "conspiring to overthrow the government." The CCP uses such accusations to insist on its characterization of the 1989 Democracy Movement. The aims of criminalizing a "handful of people" are to deny that the 1989 Democracy Movement was a revolutionary movement, in which the people rose spontaneously, mobilized widely and began to organize themselves; that the movement was triggered by deep contradictions of the CCP regime; that the repression of the Movement revealed the totally corrupt and rotten nature of the
CCP regime and its political suicide in front of the people. By concentrating its attack on a small group of people, its aim is to root out the most active fighters in the Democracy Movement and to issue, at the same time, a warning to the people as a whole.
Three groups of victims
On current information it seems that there are three main groups who have been singled out for severe punishment:
• People who have been actively promoting the democracy movement since 1979, including Ren Wanding, Wang Juntao, Chen Ziming and Liu Jiamin.
• Workers leaders, including Hang Dongfang, Li Jinjin, Liu Qiang and He Lili, who organized independent unions and are potentially capable of liberating the massive dynamic of the workers behind this Democracy Movement.
• Leaders of the student movement, including Wang Dan, Zheng Xuguang and Zhang Ming.
At the same time intellectuals who have been particularly active, such as Liu Xiabo, Liu Suli and Chen Xiaoping, and supporters of the CCP faction that has lost power, have also been targets of attack.
Some of the Democracy Movement activists — who face charges that carry a possible death penalty - were participants in the 1979-81 samizdat journals movement. At the end of 1978, the CCP faction led by Deng Xiaoping carried out economic reforms that did not touch the political power of the bureaucracy. At the same time, spontaneous samizdat publishing movements, championing political democratization and other reforms, aros in the society.
Overseas soldarity develops
The Chinese people, including overseas compatriots, must try by all means to defend and rescue them. Overseas solidarity campaigns are developing on a large scale.
Marches, demonstrations, signature campaigns, and other acts of protest, are stating clearly to the CCP regime: you will not succeed in your attempts to cover up with legal procedures your repression of democracy movement activists; your attempt to foster a facade of legality and stability will fail completely; we shall remove the cloth covering the butcher's knife, and reveal the ferocious face of the murderers in front of the broad masses.
The overseas democracy movement has a lot of practical and urgent things to do. On the question of the "trials", , it must initiate the widest possible contacts and acts of solidarity, on the one hand to stay the hand of the regime and on the other to aid the families of the persecuted.
As for the communication of information, it must strive to break the official news blockade, send information into mainland China, and link up with and encourage the struggles of the people inside the country.
By striking at the legality of the regime and isolating it, it must try to win over those people with lotty ideals to the side of the people and not to collude with the enemy•
The Chinese Democracy Movement began its rise in 1976 and, with the traditions of the 1979 Democracy Movement and the 1989 Democracy Movement, there will be countless fighters of the people taking up the torch and continuing the theoretical research work on Chinese society and the democracy Movement, in this ary povemen the democram seolution: 27 way promoting the democratic revolutionary movement of the broad masses. *
USSR
"For their freedom and ours!"
T he outcome of this confrontation is by no means predetermined. The Baltic movements have powerful allies, allies that are potentially a match for Gorbachev and the Stalinist Black Hundreds that have flocked to his crusade to "save the Union"
They are not the Western governments that have made hypocritical protests.
The Soviet press has had no trouble finding statements by wester leaders showing that they don't really mind.
The allies of the Baltic national democratic forces are, in the first instance, the mass democratic movements in the other republics and in the Russian federation itself.
This support was reflected in the demonstration of more than 100,000 people in Moscow on January 20.
The movement of solidarity with the Baltic peoples that began to develop in •earnest in the Russian centers in response to the blockade of Lithuania has grown into a vast mobilization.
It is of crucial importance for the future of the democratic revolution in the Soviet Union.
Ivan Drach, chair of the Ukrainian national movement, Rukh, responded to Moscow's campaign of violence in a message to the Lithuanians by raising the old slogan of the 1848 revolutions.
"The dark forces of evil cannot break the aspirations of the peoples for independence! Together we are invincible. For your freedom and ours!"
Radicalization of national movements
The Soviet crackdown came in fact in the context of a radicalization of the national movements both in the political and in the social sense, as reflected, for example, by the rejection of Lithuanian premier Prunskiene's price rises and the denunciation of the bureaucracy's privatization by Drach at the recent congress of Rukh. (See International Viewpoint No. 196, December 10, 1990.)
The attacks of the Soviet armed forces have had essentially two targets — first of all, newspaper printing plants and paper warehouses, and secondly centers of independent armed forces, including the legal police and the Ministry of the Interior of Latvia, which has by no means been a nest of nationalists.
Obviously, what worries the Stalinist bureaucracy is first and foremost the freedom of speech that has existed for some 28 years now in the Baltic, which has made it years now in the Baltic, which has made i the cockpit and political laboratory of the