Scientists Threaten to Shun China in Effort to Win Freedom for Fang
More than 200 scientists asked the Chinese government Monday to allow Fang Lizhi and his wife, Li Shuxian, to leave China and threatened to boycott scientific conferences there until the human rights activists are free to emigrate.
The scientists, led by Soviet physicist Yuri Orlov, also urged the U.S. government to put more pressure on China to permit the two to leave their refuge at the U.S. Embassy without threat of arrest.
The Chinese government accused Fang, an astrophysicist, of inciting the May, 1989, pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tian An Men Square. He and his wife, also a scientist, fled to the American Embassy.
The two have refused to sign an “admission of guilt” for responsibility for the demonstrations, which ended in a bloody crackdown and martial law.
“We should try to push the opportunistic and insensitive U.S. Administration in the right direction,” Orlov told a news conference.
The appeal to free Fang and Li includes petitions signed by 224 prominent scientists, including several Nobel laureates, to the Chinese government through its Academy of Sciences and to U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III.
The scientists also said they will encourage boycotts of scientific conferences in China until the two are released.
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