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China due to release Tiananmen activist after 18 years
2007-08-30
A young man stands in front of tanks heading down Chang'an Boulevard on June 5, 1989, in front of the Beijing Hotel. The tanks stopped their advance momentarily as he pleaded for an end to the killing in China's capital. (AP Photographer Jeff Widener) |
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One of China's longest-serving prisoners, jailed for his involvement in the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement 18 years ago, is due to be released in November, a US-based rights group said Thursday. Li Weihong, originally sentenced in 1989 to death with a two-year reprieve, is due to be freed on November 11 after several sentence reductions, Dui Hua Foundation said in a statement. Li, who was a 21-year-old worker in central China's Hunan province at the time, was convicted of "hooliganism" for organising street protests that turned violent in April 1989, it said. The charge of "hooliganism," like counter-revolution, was abolished from Chinese law in 1997. Li, who will be 40 by the time he is released, was sentenced to death in June 1989 but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1992. He had since received several sentence reductions for good behaviour. Dui Hua Foundation said it received information about Li's impending release from a Chinese government source. The Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement ended in bloodshed on June 4 1989, when tanks crushed the demonstrations, killing hundreds and possibly thousands of protesters. There are around 100 Tiananmen activists still behind bars across China, according to Australia-based Sun Liyong, who has been compiling information about jailed pro-democracy protesters. Many of them suffer from psychological conditions and will face poverty when they are released from jail. Former journalist Yu Dongyue, who was freed last year after nearly 17 years in jail for throwing ink on Mao Zedong's portrait during the Tiananmen protest, went insane as a result of torture and abuse in prison. As China celebrates its one-year countdown to the Beijing Olympics, international rights groups say unjust detentions and the torture of political prisoners remain a major concern.
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