World

China Arrests Irk Dissidents, U.S.

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

December 2, 1998 / 7:53 AM EST / CBS

Calling China deceitful for signing human rights treaties while stifling dissent, nearly 200 dissidents Wednesday demanded the government release campaigners trying to set up an opposition party.

Police freed two campaigners early Wednesday after their second night in detention, but kept in custody three of China's most prominent dissidents: Xu Wenli, Qin Yongmin and Wang Youcai, all outspoken organizers of the would-be China Democracy Party.

Xu and Qin were taken away by police Monday night in coordinated raids in two cities that delivered the sternest blow to the 5-month campaign to establish the party and challenge the ruling Communist Party's ban on opposition politics.

Qin was arrested for plotting to overthrow the government, a crime that could keep him in jail for life. Xu was taken away on warrants that identified him as a criminal suspect, while Wang, detained a month ago, was also formally arrested Monday, although his family has not been told the charge.

"We conveyed our strong views to officials in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs today in Beijing and urged the authorities to release Xu immediately," said State Department spokesman James Rubin.

"We view his detention for peacefully exercising fundamental freedoms guaranteed by international human rights instruments as a serious step in the wrong direction," Rubin added.

The Chinese foreign ministry had no immediate comment on Rubin's remarks.

The campaign for a new party heated up after China signed key U.N. human rights treaties, partly to improve relations with the United States and other Western countries.

"By these acts, China's government and relevant authorities have brazenly violated international treaties and universal human rights principles," said an open letter signed by 190 dissidents in 22 provinces and cities and faxed to foreign news agencies.

"On the one hand, they are deceiving and cheating international public opinion while on the other hand they are suppressing and persecuting domestic political dissidents," said the letter.

The letter demanded the release of Xu, Qin, Wang, and any others taken into custody.

Qin and Xu are towering figures in China's persecuted dissident community. Their activism dates to the seminal Democracy Wall movement of the 1970s. Wang heralds from 1989's influential Tiananmen Square democracy movement, in which he was a student leader. All have spent time in prison, Xu for 12 years, much of it in solitary confinement.

Xu's wife said she does not know where he is being held and, in her 20-year experience with the authorities, believes they are unlikely to tell her.

Released in 1993, Xu picked up his campaigning for political change soon after his parole ended last year. He has tried to use China's nascent legal system and the international treaties it signed to push for reform.

"My husband is innocent anthere's nothing he can be criticized for," said his wife, He Xintong. "They're going to have to expend a lot of effort to make him a criminal."
Qin's family was told Wednesday to send clean clothes and quilts to him, a sign authorities were preparing for a long detention, the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China reported.