Posted on 03/05/2004 4:21:09 AM PST by nuconvert
Chinese Activist Released, Joins Another Dissident in Rhode Island
Mar 5, 2004
By Brooke Donald / Associated Press Writer
WARWICK, R.I. (AP) - An activist who helped organize the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests appeared stunned as he was hugged and given flowers after his arrival in Rhode Island to meet a fellow dissident. Wang Youcai, 37, a physicist, had been given medical parole and was released after six years in a southern China prison. He arrived at T.F. Green Airport in Warwick on Thursday night and said he was overwhelmed with his new freedom.
"I'm not sure what exactly is going on," he said through a woman acting as his interpreter. "I need time to clear my head."
It was the third time in a week Beijing has acted on a case after lobbying from Washington, in what some believe are efforts to stave off a possible United Nations resolution condemning China.
In 1998, Wang and dissident Xu Wenli were sentenced to prison terms of more than a decade for activities related to the founding of the China Democracy Party.
Xu was released from prison in December 2002 and came with his wife to Rhode Island to join their daughter. He currently is a visiting senior fellow at Brown University.
Wang also was one of more than a dozen student leaders of the 1989 demonstrations that led to the military crackdown. He served a year in prison in 1990 on related charges.
A half dozen people gathered to greet Wang when he arrived in Rhode Island, including Xu and Xu's family. Xu Jin said her family got just two days notice that Wang would be coming.
They have secured rental housing for him near their home in Providence, and are planning to get Wang a medical checkup in coming days.
Wang's release was the latest among cases the U.S. government has identified as priorities and was seen as a sign the Chinese government was responding directly to Washington's human rights concerns.
In its annual human rights report last month, the U.S. State Department said China was "backsliding on key human rights issues," citing arrests of democracy activists and individuals who discussed subjects on the Internet deemed sensitive by the government.
On Wednesday, Beijing cut one year from the eight-year prison term of Rebiya Kadeer, a Muslim businesswoman convicted of violating national security after she sent Chinese newspapers to her husband.
Last week, China released Phuntsog Nyidron, a Tibetan nun who was arrested in 1989 on charges of "counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement" and sentenced to eight years in prison.
Xu Wenli said that while Wang's release is exciting, it's simply a gesture by a Chinese government trying to protect itself from international pressure.
"It doesn't mean Chinese human rights have improved," he said, through the interpreter. "We were arrested and also used as a bargaining chip."
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