(b) Six Beijing residents serving life terms:

In recent years, under international pressure, China has released some 1989 prisoners.  However, even those released continue to face restrictions such as "deprivation of political rights," which in the Chinese context includes restrictions on freedom of movement, bans on writing articles and accepting interviews, and subjection to police surveillance.  

Three residents of Beijing known to have been released in 2006 but still under deprivation of political rights:

CHRD has also confirmed that the Beijing residents listed below were swiftly sentenced to death and immediately executed within weeks after they were arrested following the bloody crackdown on June 3 and 4, 1989:

Lin Zaorong (林昭荣)
Zhang Wenkui (张文奎)
Chen Jian (陈坚)
Zu Jianjun (祖建军)
Wang Hanwu (王汉武)
Luo Hongjun (罗红军)
Ban Huijie (班会杰)
Xu Guoming (徐国明)
Bian Hanwu (卞汉武)
Yan Xuerong (严雪荣)

Beijing Activists Intimidated, Monitored or Put under House Arrest

Since May 23, Qi Zhiyong ( 齐志勇), Beijing activist who was shot during the 1989 Tiananmen massacre and left disabled, has been under intermittent house arrest. Between May 23 and 28, and again on May 31, about four/five Beijing policemen stationed at his home. On June 1, when police learned that journalists were coming to interview Qi, they took him away to a Beijing suburb. Qi was sent home on June 2 and continues to be under house arrest.

On May 30 and June 1, several Beijing-based independent writers/scholars including Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波), Jiang Qisheng (江棋生), Yu Haocheng (于浩成) and Zhang Zuhua （张祖桦）were questioned for hours by the police from the National Security Unit of Beijing Public Security Bureau (PSB) about the commemorative articles they wrote on a new website, Tiananmen Mothers (www.tiananmenmother.org). They were warned against writing articles about the 1989 massacre or the Olympics. At least a dozen other Beijing activists have been warned by the National Security police and/or put under 'residential surveillance'¹ (监视居住). Since June 2, Beijing-based lawyer Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强) has been warned to stay away from the Tiananmen Square and closely watched and followed by police. Qi vowed to commemorate those killed in Tiananmen Square every June 3 and had done so since 1989 ('June Fourth' Seventeen Years Later: How I Kept a Promise).

Beijing police are also nervously watching the "Tiananmen Mothers"--families of those killed during the Tiananmen massacre. Authorities are worried that the Tiananmen Mothers would gather for commemoration along Chang An Avenue, a main road bordering the Square where the killings took place.

Recommendations

Chinese Human Rights Defenders reiterates its demands that

• the Chinese government allow an open and independent investigation of the Tiananmen massacre and of allegations of torture and wrongful imprisonment;
• where there is corroborated evidence that people engaged in violent acts, their sentences be reviewed and early release considered, given the circumstances at the time;
• any officials responsible for ordering the executions, torture, wrongful convictions and for ordering that troops shoot or otherwise kill innocent people acting non-violently be held accountable for their crimes;
• the authorities engage in dialogue with and compensate those who were punished, disabled or killed for participating in the protests as well as their families.
• people imprisoned for merely engaging in peaceful protests or acts of self-defense be immediately released and compensated for personal damage;
  

For more information, please contact networkcrd@gmail.com