China
Puts Dissidents under House Arrest For Human Rights Day
China on Friday detained key
dissidents, placing some under house arrest amid growing calls for a tougher
U.S. stance on Beijing's rights record ahead of World Human Rights Day.
As rights activists and former
prisoners of conscience gave testimony to a U.S. congressional hearing on human
rights abuses in China, Beijing-based veteran democracy activist Zha Jianguo
said he is now at home under tight surveillance.
"They've been standing guard
outside my door since early this morning," Zha said. "The police called
me and said that tomorrow is World Human Rights Day, and that they'll be doing
this for two days."
"They said I mustn't go
out," he said. "I said that's not OK, I have things to do, and you're
going to deprive me of my basic right to freedom of movement on Human Rights
Day?"
He said he went out on Friday
anyway. "They just followed me the whole time, until I had done what I
needed to do and came home," Zha said.
"They're still standing
outside the door now."
He said veteran political
journalist Gao Yu, who was released from jail on medical parole earlier this
year, is in a similar situation.
In Washington, Jin Bianling, wife
of disappeared rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong, says she is hoping U.S.
politicians will step up the pressure on Beijing over her husband's
whereabouts.
"I am hoping that the
leaders of the U.S. Congress will get in touch with the Chinese leadership and
find out where my husband Jiang Tianyong is," she told RFA before
attending a hearing on human rights run by the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China in Washington.
Jiang has been incommunicado,
believed detained, since last month after visiting the family of detained
rights lawyer Xie Dan in Changsha, Hunan province.
"My husband bought a train
ticket to go back to Beijing from Changsha on Nov. 21, and he sent out a social
media post at around 10.22 p.m," Jin told reporters ahead of the hearing.
"We haven't heard anything
from him since."
Hope
Trump will be tougher
She called on the Chinese
government to release Jiang immediately.
"If he is being held under
residential surveillance, we want to know where he is," she said. "We
also call on them not to torture him, and to take steps to take care of his
health."
Former Beijing University
professor Xia Yeliang, who also attended the hearing, said many Chinese
dissidents in exile are hoping for a tougher line on human rights under a Trump
administration.
"When Donald Trump becomes
president of the United States, it's likely that we will see a shift in policy
towards China," Xia said.
"People of all ethnic groups
have been targeted for persecution by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and
we want Congress ... to understand the serious failings of the current regime,"
he said.
Veteran democracy activist Wei
Jingsheng told the hearing that he fully supports president-elect Donald
Trump's idea of a trade war with China, and that such an action should have
been started a long time ago.
"Since Chinese law does not
guarantee human rights, it is able to keep labor prices at a very low
level," Wei told the hearing.
"This has led to the
relocation of U.S. companies to foreign countries, while [it] also allows
Chinese goods entering the US market with low prices, resulting in unfair
competition," he said.
‘Pressure
works’
Anhui-based rights activist and
former state prosecutor Shen Liangqing said the government routinely clamps
down on politically sensitive figures around Human Rights Day, which is also
the anniversary of the detention of jailed Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo in
2008.
"Of course it's highly
inappropriate that they are violating human rights on Human Rights Day; it
makes a mockery of it," Shen said.
"But this is business as
usual for the Chinese Communist Party. They have been doing this for years as
part of their stability maintenance strategy."
He said Chinese leaders care very
little about international public opinion.
"They don't care about all
that: they just want to make sure that all remains quiet and that there are no
signs of trouble," he said.
But Uyghur dissident-in-exile
Rebiya Kadeer said international pressure was the reason for her release from
jail in 2005 on medical parole.
"Let us be clear,"
Kadeer told the hearing. "Pressure works."
She called on Beijing free jailed
Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, his students and all Uyghur writers and reporters
who contributed to his UighurBiz website.
She also called on the Trump
administration to "urge China to change its repressive policy, which is
the root cause of all bloody incidents in Uyghur region."
Human Rights Day falls on Dec. 10
every year, and was established in 1950 to mark the adoption of the United
Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights two years earlier.
It is frequently used as a focal
point and key anniversary for political and human rights activists in China.