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CHINA: HONG KONG CARDINAL URGES NEW CHINESE STANCE ON TIANANMEN PROTESTS

FRANCIS WONG, of Ecumenical News International, reports…

Ecumenical News International

Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun has urged China to change its stance on the crackdown 20 years ago against peaceful protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

“I hope they really consider seriously the possibility of a reassessment of the verdict,” the RTHK radio station reported the recently retired Roman Catholic bishop of Hong Kong as saying in a 1st June 2009 speech at the territory’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club.

“I hope they really consider seriously the possibility of a reassessment of the verdict.”

– Recently retired Roman Catholic bishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun.

Some reports have suggested that about 1000 people died in the crackdown on 4th June, 1989, against protesters calling for more democracy and clean government. Beijing says that the official intervention was necessary because the protesters threatened the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party.

RHTK was reporting on 3rd June that police and security forces in Beijing had stepped up controls among tourists on Tiananmen Square ahead of the anniversary. The radio station said human rights groups had estimated that about 30 people are still serving prison sentences for their activities in 1989, while hundreds of protest leaders remain in exile.

Separately a group attending a global prayer gathering in Hong Kong on 31st May unveiled a banner advocating prayers for the victims of the 1989 crackdown.

Thousands of Protestant Christians, including some practising senior government officials were attending the Global Day of Prayer gathering.

When the officials led the congregation in prayers for the government, the protesters unfurled two banners. One urged praying for the victims of the crackdown on 4th June, 1989, and called for a church blessing for possible universal suffrage in Hong Kong in 2012. The other criticised what was described as a culture of hypocrisy within the church regarding Beijing.

The group was asked not to display the banners and they left after a while.

In a statement faxed to Christian media in Hong Kong, the protesting group lamented that leaders of the 1989 protests living in exile are prevented from returning home, while economic progress in China has failed to narrow a widening gap between rich and poor.

The organisers of the global prayer gathering later issued a statement regretting that “a political protest” had taken place during religious activity.

Meanwhile, Ekklesia reports that Amnesty International has called on Chinese authorities to hold an open and independent inquiry into the violent military crackdown on peaceful demonstrators in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The organisation is urging people to sign an international online petition, calling for an inquiry, at www.protectthehuman.com/tiananmen.

The call is being backed by survivors of the crackdown, Shao Jiang, Dr Wang Rongfen and Yenhua Wu, as part of a gathering a Amnesty’s Human Rights Action centre in London.

Speaking at a press conference in London on June 3rd, Amnesty International’s UK Director Kate Allen: “The Chinese authorities should reveal the truth about Tiananmen Square in an open and independent inquiry. They should release those who are still in prison for their involvement in protests that took place 20 years ago. And they should end the persecution of those who try to discuss the Tiananmen Square crackdown and other human rights issues.”

The Chinese government has thwarted various attempts to shed light on the military crackdown which resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries in June 1989.

Between 20 and 200 people are still in detention for their involvement in the 1989 pro-democracy protests, according to several non-governmental organisations.

The Chinese government has not made official figures public and has even intensified its current repression of activists and lawyers in the lead up to the anniversary.

Amnesty International has documented at least 100 cases of activists who have been detained briefly or have faced violence from authorities in 2009 as they defended land rights, housing rights and labour rights. Signatories of 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. Lawyers have also been threatened with violence by the authorities, hindered from meeting clients or even detained just for doing their work

In an open letter sent to Wu Bangguo, the Chairman of the National People’s Congress of China, Amnesty International said: “Continuing to silence domestic voices calling for accountability is not in the interests of a harmonious society…The National People’s Congress has within its powers the ability to lead the way in calling for an accounting of all those who died, those who were imprisoned and those who remain in prison still.”

The letter continued: “Those who remain in prison, many under charges of ‘counter revolutionary’ crimes that were removed from the Chinese Criminal Code in 1997, should be immediately released as a first step toward 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. Amnesty says that 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 on the internet which commemorate the crackdown.

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 2009 they were forbidden to attend a mourning ceremony.

At the launch of the Amnesty International Annual Report last week, AI Secretary General Irene Khan called on China to sign and ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 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.

However, Amnesty warns that the success of the plan hinges on the implementation, not on just rhetoric.

www.amnesty.org.uk/index.asp

 

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