The list of political prisoners submitted by Wang Dan includes rights activist Wu Gan, who goes by the screen name “Butcher” (Photo: Internet)
As a high-level U.S.-China meeting looms, 1989 student movement leader Wang Dan called on the U.S. to urge China to release a large number of political prisoners during the talks. A number of overseas pro-democracy activists warned the Biden administration not to fall into the trap of Chinese Communist hostage diplomacy and not to engage in empty talks on human rights issues.
International media report that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with Yang Jiechi, director of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s Foreign Affairs Working Committee, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Alaska for the first high-level meeting between the U.S. and China since Biden took office.
On March 14, through Dialogue China, an overseas Chinese opposition think tank he founded, 1989 Movement leader Wang Dan sent a letter to the U.S. National Security Council and the State Department submitting a list of 50-60 political prisoners, including Wu Gan, Wang Yi, Yu Wensheng, Zhang Zhan, Qin Yongmin, Chen Qiushi, Li Qiaochu, Geng Xiaonan, and others, calling on U.S. to submit it to the Chinese side at the Time of the talks and ask it to release these political prisoners.
Wang Dan also made two appeals: 1. He hoped that the U.S. side would attach great importance to the issues of the crackdown in Hong Kong and the Xinjiang concentration camps and expand the scope of sanctions against the officials responsible; 2. I hope the U.S. will replace the traditional policy of “strategic ambiguity” with “strategic clarity” and express clearly to China its determination to defend democratic Taiwan.
In an interview with Radio Free Asia, Wang Dan said that the human rights situation in mainland China has deteriorated rapidly, including the recent case of Niu Tengyu, who was sentenced to 14 years for sexual harassment at the age of 20, which was very rare a few years ago.
I think human rights will be the top priority in this meeting, followed by trade,” he said. This is also the first ‘summit’ between the top diplomatic echelons of China and the United States, and will determine the broad framework for the development of U.S.-China relations in the coming years. While the world’s attention is focused on Hong Kong’s Xinjiang, there are many human rights lawyers and citizen journalists in mainland China who are suffering from more severe persecution. There are more than 1,100 people counted.”
Wu Shaoping, a human rights lawyer who was forced into exile in the United States after participating in the “Xiamen Gathering,” said that the number of political prisoners detained and sentenced in recent years in mainland China is no less than in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, but is geographically dispersed and has received less attention from public opinion.
Wu Shaoping said he had not seen the entire list and hoped that Xu Zhiyong, Ding Jiaxi and Chang Weiping of the Citizens’ Movement were on it. He believes the Xinjiang and Hong Kong issues are ultimately Chinese Communist issues. The reason why the CCP is ensconced in China is because the whole system on the mainland has not changed. These political prisoners are the conscience of China, and if China’s transformation is successful, the Xinjiang and Hong Kong problems will be solved.
According to Wu Shaoping, Blinken has said that he will continue to cooperate with China if necessary, and this petition also reflects the pro-democracy activists’ concern about the direction of Biden’s policy toward China, especially to be wary of the U.S. style of paying lip service to human rights issues.
Although Wang Dan is not optimistic about Xi’s release of a large number of political prisoners, he is convinced that the rescue of political prisoners by overseas figures cannot be stopped, and that silence will only fuel the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party.
Since Xi took power, the list of political prisoners has grown longer and longer, even taking Western citizens hostage, including Michael Kovrig, Michael Spavor, Cheng Lei, Yang Hengjun, and Gui Minhai from Canada, Australia, and Sweden, respectively, sparking protests in many countries.
Su Xiaokang, chief contributor to the television film “River Elegy” and a Chinese Writer in exile, recalled that Washington politicians had fallen prey to China’s market, trade and cheap labor, and ended up feeding the tiger.
He criticized: “You don’t trade with terrorists in the Middle East, how can you trade with the Chinese Communist Party? The paradox is that it must do business with the CCP.”
Su Xiaokang said, “After the June 4 massacre, Bush the elder, Bush the younger, Clinton to Obama, have been exchanging with the CCP. Clinton traded with Jiang Zemin for Wei Jingsheng and others in exchange for access to the WTO and most favored nation status. This is the reason why the Chinese Communist Party has become strong, eaten you in the United States and suppressed you in the West over the past 30 years. During the Clinton era, a very bad start was made, and to this day the U.S. can’t change it, it’s just defensive.”
Su hopes that the Biden Administration will stick to the economic pressure of the Trump era and make an exchange with the devil, rather than eradicate the devil, “Playing the human rights card is the easiest way for them to engage in appeasementism. Playing the economic card, the trade war is what the Chinese Communist Party is afraid of, and it is very happy for you to play the human rights card with it.”
For his part, Wei Jingsheng, a pro-democracy leader who was once put on a flight to the U.S. from Jiang Zemin’s cell, said Biden should put substantial pressure on the CCP on human rights issues, not just empty talk and empty slogans.
“Human rights issues used to be the focus of U.S. policy toward China. But the Bush administration made the wrong decision to stop making deals with China on human rights, nominally eliminating hostage diplomacy and in essence removing its concern for human rights in China as a burden to be unloaded. When Hillary visited China, she actually said that human rights were no longer the focus of our conversation.”
“Human rights is a fundamental value of Western democracy, and when you give it up, the other side can’t give up the value of dictatorship – and that creates a worldwide, democratic regression.”
Wei called on the United States to unite with its allies to give the Chinese Communist Party a “taste of its own Medicine.” He argued that the U.S. should establish a human rights policy with teeth and threats, at the expense of the CCP’s economic, military, and international political interests, and impose penalties for violations rather than rewards and concessions.
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