Beijing Student Arrested; Regime Challenged to Free Prisoners

A Beijing University student has been arrested in connection with a brief mid-May campus protest, while three leading dissidents have challenged the government with an open call for release of political prisoners.

Peng Rong, 23, a biophysics graduate student, was arrested on campus Friday, according to university sources who spoke with Western reporters Sunday.

Peng had addressed a small crowd on campus May 11, calling for an end to economic sanctions against China. Although this theme echoed the government’s position, he and others also signed a petition urging people to “speak” and “act” on behalf of their nation.

Unapproved demonstrations of any sort are banned in Beijing, and it appeared that Peng’s detention was related to these actions.

Meanwhile, Hou Dejian, a rock singer who was prominent in last year’s pro-democracy demonstrations, told the British news agency Reuters that he and two former political prisoners have written an open letter to the Chinese leadership calling for the release of detained university lecturer Liu Xiaobo and other political prisoners arrested in the crackdown.

“It asks the government to release all non-criminal detainees (arrested after the crackdown),” Hou said.

Hou, who enjoys some political security because he gave up a singing career in Taiwan in 1983 to move to the mainland, took refuge after the crackdown at the Australian Embassy in Beijing. He emerged in August after receiving official assurances that he would not be arrested for his role in the protests.

Hou said that joining him in signing the open letter were two other prominent dissidents who had joined in a four-person hunger strike in Tian An Men Square last June: Zhou Duo, a former Beijing University scholar only recently released from imprisonment, and Gao Xin, former editor of the official newspaper of Beijing Teachers University, who was released late last year. Liu, the lecturer named in their letter, taught at Beijing Teachers University and was the fourth hunger striker.

“We are using this letter as a thermometer to test the political heat,” Hou said. “We want to build a new China not by blood but by reason.”

Hou, Zhou and Gao have all spoken on the record this year with foreign correspondents. They are virtually the only dissidents in Beijing to take such risky action. Their latest step comes as political tensions are high in the Chinese capital with the approach of the anniversary of last year’s June 3-4 crackdown, in which perhaps thousands of people died.

Actions of people like Hou, Zhou, Gao and Peng present authorities with a dilemma: If they respond with arrests, they do further damage to China’s image abroad, but if they allow even limited free speech, they run the risk of renewed boldness by dissenters.

Peng, the Beijing University student arrested Friday, and his friends alluded to the risks of open speech in the petition they circulated on May 11.

“For a long time, we have wanted to speak or to act for the nation and the race,” the petition said. “But we did not speak or act. We hesitate, we are depressed, disappointed. . . .

“All that is left is suffering, a burst of wrenching suffering. This is our nation. If we don’t speak, who will speak? The people are our people. If we don’t act, who will act?”