CHINA-HONG KONG In Tiananmen Square 35 years ago, still in prison today

While Beijing systematically erases the memory of the brutal repression of the student protests of June 4, 1989, there are 14 protagonists of that movement who remain behind bars, because they were arrested again for their fight for democracy. Chinese human rights defenders call for his release. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong there is concern about Jimmy Lai’s health.

Milan (/Agencies) – “For 35 years, all senior Chinese leaders, from Li Peng to Xi Jinping, have sought to erase the memory of June 4 by persecuting those who peacefully demand accountability. “Everyone who cares about justice must publicly demand that the Chinese authorities immediately and unconditionally release these and all other prisoners of conscience in China.” This is the called that Chinese Human Rights Defenders -one of the largest international organizations supporting the struggle of Chinese dissidents- has launched on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. An initiative accompanied by a list of 27 names of people who, for various reasons, are still in prison for that same battle. A list that “is far from complete,” the activists explain, “but that represents a window into the severity, scope and persistence of the Chinese government’s retaliation over the last 35 years.”

This list includes 14 names of people who directly participated in the events of 35 years ago and who are currently in prison, mostly because they were arrested again for their fights for democracy in China. Zhou Guoqiang (周国强) had gone to prison for organizing a strike in support of student protests in Beijing in 1989 and had also served four years in a re-education camp for it. He was arrested again for comments on the Internet in October 2023: his whereabouts and the charges against him remain unknown.

Guangdong activist Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄) – who participated in the 1989 movement as a student in Shanghai – is serving a six-year sentence since 2015 for his human rights activism. Another university student at the time, Chen Shuqing (陈树庆), from Hangzhou, has been serving a 10½-year sentence since 2016 for his pro-democracy activism.

Lü Gengsong (吕耿松), a teacher fired in 1993 for supporting the pro-democracy movement, has been serving an 11-year sentence since 2016 for his pro-democracy activism. Beijing-based lawyer Xia Lin (夏霖) has been serving an 11-year sentence since 2016 for his professional activities as a lawyer: he had participated in the 1989 movement as a student at the Southwestern Institute of Political Science and Political Law. Chongqing.

Xinjiang activist Zhao Haitong (赵海通) has been serving a 14-year sentence since 2014 for his activities as a human rights defender. He had also already been imprisoned after the 1989 massacre. Xu Na (许那), an artist and poet practicing Falun Gong, had participated in the Tiananmen Square hunger strike; She was arrested in 2020 and sentenced to 8 years in prison for “using an evil cult to disrupt law enforcement.”

Sichuan activist Chen Yunfei (陈云飞) served a four-year sentence between 2015 and 2019, in part for organizing a commemoration of the June 4 victims: he had participated in the 1989 movement as a student at China Agricultural University in Beijing. Another member of the student movements of the time, Xu Guang (徐光), was arrested in 2022 and is serving a four-year sentence accused of “causing fights and trouble” in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. The same fate and charges apply to Huang Xiaomin (黄晓敏), arrested in 2021 and sentenced to four years in Sichuan province, and Cao Peizhi (曹培植), arrested in 2022 and sentenced to 2.2 years in Henan province.

Zhang Zhongshun (张忠顺), another student who participated in the 1989 protests, was denounced in 2007 for speaking as he did to his students about the events of June 4. He was subsequently jailed for three years and is now detained for continuing to support activism and faces subversion charges in Shandong province. Wang Yifei (王一飞) disappeared from police custody following his arrest in 2021: Before his arrest in 2018, he had been demanding justice for the victims of 1989 for several years. Shi Tingfu (史庭福), previously convicted of organizing a public vigil in Nanjing in 2017 and deliver a speech in memory of the Tiananmen victims, he was arrested again in January 2024 and is awaiting trial on several charges, including spreading “false information and inciting terrorism and extremism in the Uyghur Autonomous Region.” of Xinjiang.

The other 13 names, however, are figures who were not directly involved in the events in Beijing in 1989, but who both in mainland China and Hong Kong fought to ensure that the memory of what happened was not erased. This second list includes, for example, Tong Hao (仝浩), a young doctor born in 1987, who was imprisoned for a year and a half for publishing a post about the June 4 anniversary in 2020. He was arrested in August 2023 and since then his whereabouts are unknown in police custody in Jiangsu province. Then there are the dissidents imprisoned in Hong Kong: from Lee Cheuk-yan to Albert Ho, including lawyer Chow Hang-tung, who has another arrest warrant along with seven other people (including her mother) for organizing an initiative in Internet to commemorate the Tainanmen massacre. And then Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong businessman founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, forced to close: At 76 years old, he felt unwell today during the 87th hearing of his surreal trial. And concern is growing about his health in prison.

As Chinese Human Rights Defenders recalls, three witnesses to the events in Tianamen Square have already died in prison in the last 35 years: the best known name is that of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波), who died in July 2017 of liver cancer under police surveillance while serving an 11-year sentence since 2009 for his role as leader of the “Letter 08” campaign. A university professor in 1989, he had been imprisoned for 18 months for participating in the 1989 movement. A few months after him, the Jiangsu writer Yang Tongyan (杨同彦) had died in November 2017 from a brain tumor. Yang was serving a 12-year sentence imposed in 2006 for his political activism, after having already spent 10 years in prison for his participation in the 1989 movement.

Finally, it is worth mentioning union activist Li Wangyang (李旺阳), who died under suspicious circumstances on June 6, 2012 while in a police-guarded hospital in Shaoyang, Hunan province. Li, leader of the 1989 democracy movement, had been sentenced to a total of 23 years in prison. Chinese authorities claimed that Li had committed suicide by hanging in his hospital room, a claim that his family disputed, claiming that Li was blind and deaf from torture and would not have been physically capable of hanging himself. Against the wishes of Li’s family, Hunan authorities performed their own autopsy on him and then cremated his body.