Jiang Urged to Free Prisoners
A Chinese activist today said he had written to President Jiang Zemin urging the Chinese leader to follow up the release of dissident Wei Jingsheng by giving freedom to other pro-democracy campaigners, including Wang Dan.
“I wanted to pressure the president, to express to him the wishes of China’s pro-democracy activists,” Qin Yongmin said by telephone from his home in Wuhan, Hubei province.
In his open letter to Jiang, Qin pleaded with the Chinese leader to release “all the ‘political criminals’ jailed for exercising their citizens’ rights.”
Qin, an associate of Wei during the 1978-79 Democracy Wall movement, was jailed for seven years beginning in 1981. Wang was a student leader of 1989 protests at Tiananmen Square.
Separately, the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China, an activist group, said today that another dissident, Lin Xinshu, was detained briefly by police in Fujian province Sunday for having written to Jiang to demand the release of Wei and Wang.
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