Imprisoned Chinese Official Is Freed, Then Disappears

The only senior Chinese official to be imprisoned for backing the 1989 student pro-democracy protests ended his seven-year prison term today and then disappeared, his family said.

“We have been told he is not in prison anymore,” Bao Puliu, the son of Bao Tong, said by telephone. “But we have trouble finding him.

“We don’t know who has custody. He is not home. It appears he has disappeared,” he said.

Bao, 63, a top aide to toppled Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang, completed his jail term a week before the seventh anniversary of the end of the student-led protests, which were brutally crushed by the army on June 4, 1989.

China has previously released political prisoners at the end of their prison terms and immediately taken them to other cities, away from any unwanted attention they would receive in Beijing.

Diplomats said Bao’s release will be a source of anxiety for China’s leaders, who must fear he might reveal details of his close association with the secretive dealings of the highest party echelons in the run-up to the 1989 crackdown.

The end of Bao’s sentence could hardly have come at a more sensitive time for China’s security apparatus, diplomats said.

Police, nervous that the anniversary could trigger commemorative activities or even unrest, detain dissidents and place political activists and foreign reporters under tight surveillance each May.

Bao was taken into custody on May 29, 1989, just days before Beijing sent tanks and troops into Tiananmen Square to crush five weeks of student demonstrations.

Sentenced to seven years in prison in July 1992, he is the highest-ranking Communist Party official to be imprisoned for his alleged role in the protests, which China officially terms a “counterrevolutionary rebellion.”

Bao, former secretary to the ruling party’s omnipotent Politburo Standing Committee, was convicted of leaking state secrets, of counterrevolutionary propaganda and of incitement.

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The court verdict gave no details of his actions, based on a conversation with an associate on May 17, 1989, but they are believed to relate to the declaration of martial law in Beijing on May 20, of which the students had advance warning.

Western human rights groups say Bao was held in solitary confinement under appalling conditions.

His family said he has ailments of the jaw and neck and intestinal polyps that have necessitated six operations, as well as swollen lymph nodes that could indicate cancer.

“His health is our priority concern,” said Bao Puliu, who returned to China last week from the United States, where he is studying at Princeton University.

“If they [the authorities] can do things according to the law and release him as scheduled, I’ll be very happy,” Bao’s wife, Jiang Zongcao, said in a recent interview.

“In the past seven years, days wore on like years,” she said, pointing to a calendar counting down the days to Bao’s release. “We long for [his] freedom. We long for our new life.”

While Bao was jailed, his mentor and political patron, reformist party chief Zhao, has lived under virtual house arrest in a roomy courtyard home in Beijing.

Zhao dropped from public view on May 19, 1989, when he visited students occupying Tiananmen Square and beseeched their leaders to end the protests. He was formally dismissed weeks later.