The September UN Conference on Women was a major diplomatic and propaganda event for China's ageing elite. As AMONG THE NGO FORUM EVENTS THAT CAUGHT MEDIA attention were a 2-hour parade by several hundred women denouncing imperialism's exploitation of labouring women in the developing countries, the Amnesty International demonstration denouncing human rights abuses in Burma and China (such as the imprisonment of woman journalist Gao Yu and Tibetan nuns), the protest by Korean women demanding Japan's compensation for comfort women (and denouncing China's preventing Chinese comfort women from attending the NGO Forum), the demonstration of environmentalists against nuclear testing, the gagged свечени. October Review reports, Chinese participation was strictly controlled. And human rights activists are still in jail. (whose only son was killed in the 1989 movement), were detained by the police for the entire period. Some, such as Tong Zheng (who campaigns for Japanese compensation for its war crimes), were forcibly deported from the capital. Thirdly, participants were put under strict surveillance and control. Numerous security people in uniform and plainclothes watched over the participants, video-taped some activities, or even broke up gatherings and confiscated materials. The regime clearly wanted to prevent contact between participants and local, Chinese women. * protest of Tibetan women in exile, the parade of lesbians, and so on and so on. Xu Zhijian, Deputy Chairman of the Chinese Organising Committee, said in a press conference that "to quote the words of a friend, in the Forum, at every place in every minute, there were discussions and there were demonstrations." Exaggerated as this comment may be, the interactions among women from around the world certainly produced many positive exchanges and reflections. The NGO Forum took place after a sustained fight with the Chinese authorities. In the first place, the Chinese authorities attempted to restrict the number of participants, and refused to issue entry visas to many participants. According to the Forum organisers, of the 36,000 persons who had registered for the Forum, only 26,000 obtained hotel registration forms (a prerequisite for visa application). There were also many cases of people holding hotel registration forms but still denied a visa. The final figures seems to to be that 31,549 persons participated in the Forum, including 5,000 from China. Most of the Chinese participants had been carefully selected; dissidents, human rights activists, seekers for compensation from Japan, and former "comfort women" were prevented from attending. Some, such as the Ding Zilin couple Reprinted from October Review, vol. 22 issue 4/1995 For more information write to: G.P.O. Box 10144, Hong Kong e-mail <[email protected]> 18 December 1995
Dicciden te detained & hornecad
Dosachils ucla IN SPRING OF 1995, A GROUP OF INTELLECTUALS publicised an open letter to the National People's Congress and the state leadership appealing for political democratisation and release of dissidents in jail. Many of the petitioners were detained for interrogation and henceforth locked up. They included Wang Dan, the well known student leader of 1989, and Liu Nianchun who has been involved in the movement for democracy since 1978.
Chen Ziming is the alleged "black hand" of the 1989 movement. He actively participated in the movement for democracy since 1978, when he was editor of the samizdat journal Beijing Spring. In 1989, the Communist Party blamed intellectuals for instigating the mass "revolt", and Chen Ziming was sentenced to jail for 13 years. In jail, he was found to have cancer, and was allowed to return home for medical treatment in May 1994. He had an operation, and was still under medication when he and his wife Wang Zhihong signed some petition letters urging for democratisation. He was once again thrown into jail this year. In jail, he was refused medication, and his health severely deteriorated. The authorities even froze the couple's bank account and put them in a desperate financial situation. In early October, Chen Ziming went on a hunger strike for over 10 days. His family applied to the Public Security Bureau for permission to hold a demonstration to appeal for his release for medical treatment, but the application was rejected. Wang Zhihong and Chen Ziming's sister Chen Zihua were even detained for several days.
In June 1994, Bao Guo petitioned the Shanghai Municipal Government for permission for him to form a human rights organisation. He was then arrested and sentenced without trial to three years in a labour re-education camp. He is "guilty" of attempting to exercise the right of association guaranteed by the Constitution.
The well known dissident Wei Jingsheng was sentenced to jail for 15 years, merely because he wrote some articles criticising the Chinese Communist Party. He was released from prison six months before the expiry of the prison term, at a time when China was bidding to hosting the Olympics 2000. Soon afterwards, Wei Jingsheng was arrested again. Over 18 months later, his whereabouts are still unknown. His family has made enquiries, but has not obtained any explicit reply. Of course, such a long detention is a violation of the People's Republic's own Law on Criminal Prosecution.
When journalists asked Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang about the abduction of Wang Zhihong and Chen Zihua by the police, he commented: "the fact that they were taken away by Public Security people itself shows that they have committed illegal acts."
During his last visit to New York Jiang Zemin, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, and President of the People's Republic of China, acknowledged that "there are some cases of violations of human rights in the social life of our country, but the Chinese government has always taken a staunch position against these violations, and has redressed them according to law.... we have always insisted that no-one will be found guilty or penalised for their speech." No comment! *
The memory of the movement