Long-Serving June 4 Prisoner Set for Release

Li Weihong (李卫红), one of China’s longest-serving prisoners arrested during the spring 1989 demonstrations, will be released from prison on November 11, 2007 following his fifth sentence reduction, The Dui Hua Foundation has learned from a reliable source in China.

Originally sentenced in 1989 to death with a two-year reprieve, Li is one of the last known prisoners serving a sentence for "hooliganism," a crime, like counterrevolution, that no longer exists in China's Criminal Code (the two crimes were removed effective October 1, 1997). Li was a 21-year-old worker at the Hunan Fire Fighting Equipment Factory in Changsha, Hunan Province when he became involved in organizing street protests that turned violent in April 1989.

"Li’s latest reduction took place earlier this year, probably around the time the sentence for the counterrevolutionary Hu Shigen was reduced," said John Kamm, Dui Hua's executive director. "Hundreds of prisoners like Li and Hu are still serving sentences for crimes that were removed from China’s criminal law nearly 10 years ago. The Chinese government should release them, something called for under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

Li Weihong was detained on April 23, 1989 and formally arrested on April 30, 1989. After the suppression of the June 4 demonstrations in Beijing, Li was found guilty of hooliganism by the Changsha Intermediate People's Court on June 22, 1989, and subsequently sentenced to death, suspended for two years. Six others tried with Li on charges of "beating, smashing, looting and burning" were convicted, sentenced to death, and executed shortly thereafter.

In 1992, the Hunan Province Higher People's Court commuted Li's death sentence and imposed a sentence of life imprisonment. Because of good behavior, the life sentence was reduced to a 17-year sentence on September 12, 1995 and set to expire on September 11, 2012, with subsequent deprivation of political rights for seven years. Since 1997, Li has received three additional sentence reductions—in 1997, 2001, and 2007—totaling four years and 10 months. He will be 40 years old when his sentence expires on November 11, 2007. Li has served his entire sentence in Hunan's Chishan Prison, beginning on March 20, 1990.

For more than 15 years, Dui Hua has asked Chinese authorities for information on Li, the longest-serving prisoner known to Dui Hua who was convicted in the spring 1989 protests that culminated in the June 4 killings in Beijing. The recent communication about Li's impending release was the first detailed information provided by a Chinese government source since he was sentenced in 1989. In the 1990s, Li figured prominently on prisoner lists submitted to Chinese authorities, but he is now rarely included on lists handed to Beijing by foreign governments.

Welcome Return for Chinese Dissident, Others Not Free to Travel

The reunion last week of Boston-based Chinese dissident Yang Jianli with his wife and son after five years in a Chinese prison hopefully marks the first of many conciliatory gestures Beijing will make as it prepares to improve China's image in the area of human rights before next year's Olympic Games.

In particular, the fact that Yang was granted a Chinese passport—identifying him as a Chinese citizen with the right to return to China at will—could be seen as a sign of Beijing's softening stance toward political dissent. Looking closer, however, at this and other recent events suggests that Yang Jianli's passport is the exception and that China still plans to use restriction on travel as a means of punishing those who hold different political views.

Obtaining a passport was a particularly sweet victory for Yang, who having left China for the United States after the crackdown on the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations, was not allowed to return because of his continued outspokenness on the need for political reform in China. Without a passport, Yang risked returning to China in 2002 using a friend's documents. Once discovered, he was subjected to a protracted two-year pre-trial detention before finally being sentenced to five years in prison on charges of espionage and illegal border crossing.

Since his return to the United States, Yang has revealed that he had refused four opportunities for early release in part because Chinese authorities could not guarantee his right to return to China. Last September, Chinese authorities arranged Yang's release only to have him turn the offer down at the airport because they would not make such a guarantee. From the moment he was released from prison in April, Yang embarked on a frustrating quest to confirm his status as a Chinese citizen and receive a passport.

One of the most unusual things about Yang Jianli's new passport is that, strictly speaking, it appears to have been issued in violation of Chinese law. Though released from prison, Yang was still technically serving his sentence, having been deprived of his political rights for a year under the court's original verdict. This means that under China's Passport Law, which prohibits individuals serving sentences from obtaining a passport, Yang should not have been eligible for one until April 2008.

Except in those rare cases in which dissidents have been allowed to travel abroad to seek medical treatment, the Chinese authorities have until now been quite consistent about denying travel rights to individuals released from imprisonment on "state security" charges but still awaiting the restoration of their political rights. Jiang Weiping, an investigative journalist whose exposés of official corruption resulted in a five-year stay in prison, was told upon his release not even to bother applying for a passport to visit his wife and daughter in Canada until the three-year deprivation period was up in January 2009.

China also invokes its passport law in rejecting applications to travel from those who by going abroad pose a "possible threat to state security and national interests." Yuan Weijing, the wife of an imprisoned rights activist, had her passport revoked as she attempted to travel to Manila last week to accept a human rights award on his behalf. Shanghai lawyer Zheng Enchong, whose advocacy for victims of urban development projects led to a three-year prison sentence completed in 2006, was just informed that he, too, would not be issued a passport because he was a "suspect in a criminal investigation."

And what of Chinese activists who, like Yang Jianli, left their homeland after 1989 and, for want of a passport, have never been allowed to return? Now approaching middle age, former student leader Wang Dan worries not only about the fate of his country but also about the health of his elderly parents. How can China justify giving Yang Jianli a passport but not Wang Dan?

This is not to say that Yang should not have been granted a passport. Indeed, had his right to return to China been observed from the beginning, he may never have been imprisoned in the first place. The problem is not simply the inconsistent application of Chinese law but the law itself. By denying travel documents based on vague assertions of national security interests, China is in conflict with international human rights laws that Beijing, with its seat on the UN Human Rights Council, is committed to uphold.

It remains to be seen whether Yang Jianli's hard-won passport will truly offer him free passage back to China. After five years in prison, he understandably wants to spend some time at home with his family. Hopefully, his next trip to China will be less eventful than the last and will help to convince the Chinese government that restricting the travels of its citizens—regardless of their individual political views—is unnecessary for protecting national security.

New Sentence Reduction for Long-Serving Chinese "Counterrevolutionary”

Hu Shigen (胡石根), one of China's last remaining dissidents imprisoned for "counterrevolution," was given a 17-month sentence reduction by a Beijing court earlier this year, The Dui Hua Foundation has learned from reliable sources.

The February 2007 sentence reduction—only the second adjustment ever made to Hu's original 20-year sentence—follows a December 2005 reduction of seven months that came three weeks after being interviewed by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak. During their November 2005 meeting, Hu Shigen informed Nowak that he had resisted pressure to confess any wrongdoing until April 2003, when a feeling of helplessness and a desire to receive a sentence reduction finally led him to do so.

Confession of guilt by prisoners is seen as an important component of rehabilitation under the Chinese prison system, and prison authorities regularly use incentives such as expanded privileges or the promise of early release to encourage prisoner confessions. In the report on his mission to China, Nowak was critical of this element of China's penal system, describing it as part of a regime of punishment aimed at creating "submissiveness and a 'culture of fear'" incompatible with a culture of human rights.

"It is very unusual for a prisoner to receive two sentence reductions in such a short period of time, and we believe the timing of the reductions is significant," says John Kamm, executive director of The Dui Hua Foundation. "For one, it demonstrates that the Chinese authorities can work productively with UN human rights mechanisms on specific cases. It also creates a momentum for additional reductions and the possibility that Hu Shigen could be released before next year's Beijing Olympics."

Hu Shigen has been incarcerated since May 1992, when he was detained along with eight other Beijing-based activists in connection with efforts to organize an opposition political party, establish an independent labor union, and commemorate the third anniversary of the crackdown on the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations. The Beijing Intermediate People's Court convicted Hu of "organizing and leading a counterrevolutionary group" and "counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement" on June 14, 1995, and handed down the longest fixed-term sentence possible under Chinese law—20 years' imprisonment with subsequent deprivation of political rights for five years. Hu's co-defendants have all been released from prison already, several of them the beneficiaries of multiple sentence reductions. After the reductions, Hu is due to be released from Beijing Number Two Prison on May 26, 2010.

Related links:

• China report by UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak
• Dui Hua interview with Manfred Nowak from Dialogue newsletter