Last week, Chinese authorities arrested a group of well-known human rights activists for holding a private seminar in Beijing to Commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. China still bans public discussions and censors all internet searches about the event, where hundreds, if not thousands, of students and ordinary citizens were killed in June 1989, said U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04), senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and chair of its subcommittee on global human rights.
“Tiananmen Square has come to symbolize the brutal lengths the Chinese Communist Party will go to retain power. The active suppression of any discussion about the facts of what happened 25 years ago continues to undermine trust in China’s leaders,” said Smith, co-chair of the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China. “In 1989 they used guns and tanks to suppress the people’s demands for freedom and democracy and today they use arrests, discrimination, and censorship to suppress those who peacefully seek basic freedoms and human rights. These are not the actions of a confident and powerful country. We urge the Chinese authorities’ to release those detained for holding a private Tiananmen commemoration and end all discrimination and harassment of former Tiananmen leaders who continue to fight peacefully for democratic reforms.”
Those detained last week include: Hu Shigen, former political prisoner and lecturer at Beijing Language and Culture University, who spent 16 years of the past 20 years in prison for his human rights and democracy advocacy; Pu Zhiqiang, a human rights lawyer and a survivor of the Tiananmen Square Massacre; Xu Youyu, a renowned jurist and researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Liu Di, writer; and Hao Jian, a professor at the Beijing Film Academy.
In addition, Ding Zilin, a leader of the Tiananmen Mothers, a group composed of women whose children were killed on June 4, 1989 and who have been demanding government accountability for the massacre, is under house arrest outside of Beijing. Gao Yu, an outspoken journalist and former Tiananmen protestor, was arrested and formally charged with leaking state secrets.
“While the hopes of the Tiananmen Square demonstrators have not been realized, their demands for freedom of speech, basic human rights, political reforms and the end of government abuse and corruption, continue to inspire the Chinese people today,” said Smith. “We in Congress remain committed to the people of China struggling for universal freedoms and we urge the Chinese government to learn from the past and embrace the greater openness, democracy, and respect for human rights that its people called for 25 years ago, and continue to call for today.”
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