Chinese Dissident Monitoring Human Rights Abuses Detained
Police took Qin Yongmin from the central city of Wuhan to a
police station Wednesday, held him for 24 hours and
searched his house, the Information Center of Human Rights and
Democratic Movement in China said in a statement.
Police said they were confiscating everything related to Qin's
group because it was illegal, the statement said. All organizations
in China must obtain permission from authorities by registering.
Qin's monitoring group had issued 86 reports since March, the
Hong Kong group said.
Another member of Qin's group, Chen Zonghe, said police detained
him for seven hours and told him to stop taking part in the group's
work.
Qin, who recently has issued appeals for reforms, including the
abolition of labor camps, has been detained repeatedly in his years
as a dissident. He served several years in prison in the 1980s
after participating in the Democracy Wall movement of the late
'70s, and was confined to a labor camp in 1994-95.
China's persistent dissident community has faced relentless
police harassment, often making it impossible for them to hold jobs
or lead normal lives.
Liao Yiwu, a dissident writer, wrote the Security Bureau, the
secret police, in southwestern Chengdu city last week to complain
that its tactics kept him from working steadily since leaving
prison four years ago, the New York-based Human Rights in China
reported.
Police threats forced a newspaper and magazine to fire him and
investigators closed a book store that he had borrowed more than
$2,400 to open, the group said. Liao, 39, was finding it hard to
support a young daughter and marry his girlfriend of four years.
Meanwhile, police prevented the wife of an exiled dissident from
traveling to the Portuguese colony of Macau on China's southern
coast to meet him, the Information Center said.
Police stopped the bus carrying Su Jiang to the Macau border and
drove her back to the southern city of Guangzhou, where she lives,
the group said. Police held her for four hours before releasing
her, it added.
Su's husband, veteran dissident Wang Xizhe, fled China for the
United States in October 1996 after co-writing a letter criticizing
China's Communist authorities and calling for the impeachment of
President Jiang Zemin.
Wang arrived in Macau on Tuesday to attend a conference about
the colony's return to Chinese rule on Dec. 20, 1999.
|
comments@foxnews.com © 1998, News America Digital Publishing, Inc. d/b/a Fox News Online. All rights reserved. Fox News is a registered trademark of 20th Century Fox Film Corp. |
© 1998 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. |