Purloined from Matt Forney's article in today's WSJ:
BEIJING -- Chinese authorities have shown their anxiety over the coming
10th anniversary of the Tiananmen student uprising by ordering police to detain
dissidents, including some who were circulating petitions commemorating the
decade-old democratic movement.
Police in the northeast city of Anshan, in what was once Manchuria, detained
two members of the illegal Chinese Democracy Party on Tuesday. The two,
Wang Wenjiang and Wang Zechen, who aren't related, had helped organize a
petition demanding that the Communist Party reassess its verdict that the
democracy movement centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square a decade ago
was "counter-revolutionary." Their party claims 1,000 members in more than
20 cities, even though three of its organizers are serving prison sentences of
more than 10 years.
"I came home at 5 o'clock, and my husband was gone and the house had been
searched," says Li Jinglan, the wife of Wang Wenjiang, a lawyer. Police told
her to bring clothes for her husband, but wouldn't let her visit him while he is
being "investigated."
Hundreds of people died when soldiers opened fire on unarmed demonstrators
on June 4, 1989. With the anniversary approaching, the government has
detained more than 50 dissidents, and still holds 14, according to the Hong
Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement.
Police in central Zhejiang province have held Wu Yilong, a founder of the
Chinese Democracy Party, for a month.
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None dare call this thuggery. Heaven forfend that those behind this type action should be called "heirs" to the Butcher of Tiananmen Square. I submit this is not the kind of government with whom the US should have "normal" relations. |
