Word: jingsheng
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TURNING to the world stage, Harvard could invite Nelson Mandela. If the University is really daring, it could extend an invitation to Wei Jingsheng, a Chinese democrat who has been in jail since 1979. Now that Anatoly Sharansky and Mandela are free, Wei has the unfortunate distinction of being the political dissident who has been imprisoned for the longest time. Harvard could embarrass the Chinese dictators and give a nudge to one of the world's last nightmarish Communist regimes...
...risk of rousing large-scale protests is minimal. Except for a few notices posted outside the Beijing Intermediate People's Court, the prosecutions have so far proceeded with little official fanfare. The government may be calculating that concern for the detainees will eventually fade, as it did for Wei Jingsheng, 40, an activist during the Democracy Wall movement of 1978-79, who is marking his 12th year behind bars...
When Ren Wanding [head of the Chinese Human Rights League], Wei Jingsheng, Fu Yuehua, Chen Lu, Zhang Wenhe and others were arrested in March 1979, the event was followed closely by the Chinese and foreign press. Why this concern about the fate of a few ordinary Chinese citizens? It is because the arrests had created a cold March wind that was blowing across the Chinese political horizon...
...Jingsheng had violated the law against divulging secrets, but the court convicted him of two other more serious crimes and sentenced him to 15 years' imprisonment and a loss of his political rights for three years. This kind of harsh judgment is a mockery of the Chinese judicial system, and it is a warning to everyone to be very cautious in speaking one's mind. Real liberation of thought and true freedom of expression must wait until man is willing to struggle for them...
...circulation of only 1,000 before publication was suspended early last year, it was, according to one Western diplomat, "a twinkle in a vast void." Thus the arrests of Xu and Yang further weakened an already anemic democratic movement. It has been on the retreat since Dissident Leader Wei Jingsheng was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in October 1979, two months before the Democracy Wall was stripped clean and put off-limits...