Thu, Jun 05, 2014 page3

• Break China’s ‘Great Wall’: rights activist

  TAIWAN TARGET: Chen Guangcheng said ideally China would become more like Taiwan, while others called for China to release political prisoners

  • By Nadia Tsao and Jason Pan / Staff reporter in WASHINGTON, with staff writer
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  “Twenty years from now, the most ideal condition for China to be in is that of Taiwan today,” exiled Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠) said in the US on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square Massacre.

  Chen spoke at an event called “25 Years After Tiananmen” organized by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington.

  “A government that refuses to face the past is a government without a future,” Chen said, referring to China’s unwillingness to examine the events at Tiananmen Square.

  

  Wang Dan, center right, and Chinese activists participate in an event at Times Square in New York on Tuesday to mark the 25th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square Massacre.

  Photo: CNA

  “Some Chinese have managed to overcome their fear and are beginning to struggle for democracy,” Chen said, urging his fellow citizens to break down China’s “Great Wall” of suppression.

  He also thanked activists in Hong Kong and other places who continue to commemorate the event every year and to speak up for the people killed in 1989.

  Also in Washington, a group of Chinese exiles and Tiananmen survivors convened at Capitol Hill on Monday to observe the anniversary of the crackdown.

  After a remembrance ceremony for the people killed in the massacre, the group announced the launch of an international campaign to demand that China end its one-party political system.

  Campaign leaders Wang Dan (王丹) and Wang Juntao (王軍濤) read a statement that urged the international community to put pressure on Beijing to open up to democracy and to terminate the Chinese Communist Party’s monopoly on power.

  Wang Dan teaches at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, while Wang Juntao is co-chairman of the China Democratic Party.

  Wang Dan called on Western countries to show no fear of China, adding that if people are afraid of confronting Beijing now, then a greater price will be paid for it later.

  In the past 100 years, history has shown that if a country is very powerful and has military might, but does not have democracy, the trend is for it to devolve into a fascist regime, Wang Dan said.

  After the event in Washington, Wang Dan and Wang Juntao traveled to New York to take part in a march to commemorating the Tiananmen anniversary.

  More than 200 Chinese exiles and US citizens participated in the march, which finished in Times Square, where a candle-lit vigil was held in the evening.

  Earlier in the day, activists went to the Chinese consulate in New York for a protest rally. They demanded that China open up to democracy, protect people’s freedom, as well as demanding the release of several political activists currently in prison or under house arrest in China.
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