TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121790/1217008.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.6 KB | 122 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 41

CHINA

Justice in a Hurry


After carefully biding its time, Beijing suddenly steps up the
prosecution of Tiananmen Square dissidents

By GUY GARCIA -- Reported by Jaime A. FlorCruz and Mia
Turner/Beijing


    A court officer visited the Beijing home of Chen Ziming's
elderly parents late last month and presented them with an
official notice. A branch of the Beijing procuratorate court,
the document said, has approved the formal arrest of Chen
Ziming on charges of "inciting counterrevolutionary propaganda"
and "subversion." A trial could take place as early as this
month.

    The official's visit was ominous, since Chen Ziming, 38, the
former head of a private think tank, had been accused of being
a key organizer of the Tiananmen Square protests that the
government brutally crushed in June 1989. After the crackdown,
Chen went underground with his wife and several friends,
including Wang Juntao, 32, a former editor of the defunct
Economic Studies Weekly. Late last year the pair topped a
secret government wanted list of pro-democracy leaders. Arrested
a few months later while trying to escape abroad, Chen and
Wang are detained in Qincheng, a maximum-security prison
outside Beijing.

    Wang, like Chen, was formally charged last month with the
same accusations. Charges of inciting counterrevolutionary
agitation and propaganda have reportedly been -- or will soon
be -- brought against at least nine other Tiananmen Square
activists, including Wang Dan, 25, the Peking University
student who helped set up the student forum known as the
Democracy Salon, and Liu Xiaobo, a literary critic and lecturer
at Beijing Normal University. A guilty verdict for
counterrevolutionary activity carries a sentence of at least
five years in jail; subversion carries a minimum penalty of 15
years in jail, but could also mean life imprisonment or death.

    Why did Beijing choose this particular moment to step up its
prosecutions? One theory holds that Beijing's embattled leaders
would like to close the book on the Tiananmen episode and turn
their attention to more pressing domestic problems, such as the
ailing Chinese economy and improvement of relations with the
West.

    Another possibility is that Beijing wants to avoid the
embarrassment that would result if some of the dissidents were
nominated as write-in candidates in the local People's Congress
elections now under way. Yet another theory contends that
recent diplomatic overtures from the West and the international
preoccupation with the gulf crisis have convinced the Chinese
that the trials will provoke only a muted outcry from abroad.

    The authorities may have also simply decided that enough
time has passed since the Tiananmen crackdown so the 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.

    Despite official assurances to the contrary, the chances of
the students' getting a fair trial are considered remote. While
the Chinese constitution guarantees a defendant's right to a
public trial and a lawyer, the reality can be quite different.
Often a verdict is reached before a case goes to court, and
access to courtrooms is restricted to those holding
government-issued tickets. Hou Xiaotian, 27, Wang's wife,
expresses the hopelessness shared by the detainees' friends and
families when she says, "I feel tiny and weak, as insignificant
as a droplet of water in the sea. When I call out on behalf of
my husband, I hear not a sound in response."

    But some voices are being raised. Amnesty International has
asked for permission to send a team of observers to monitor
future trials; Beijing has warned that outside attempts to
influence China's judicial system "will get nowhere." And last
week, Congressman Robert Torricelli, a New Jersey Democrat and
a member of the House subcommittee on Asian affairs, who was
visiting Beijing, took up the issue of the detainees in
discussions with Vice Foreign Minister Liu Huaqiu and other
Chinese officials. Torricelli said he urged the government to
grant amnesty to the detainees and explained that assuming the
West no longer cared about the fate of the dissidents would be
"a tragic mistake."

    After initially evading discussion on the status of the
detainees, the Foreign Ministry spokesman last week changed
tack and denied that any prosecution or sentencing of
dissidents had taken place. At the same time, he rejected
foreign inquiries on the prosecution of state criminals as
meddling in China's internal affairs. He decried speculation
that the Communists were taking advantage of the gulf crisis
to crack down on dissidents as "an act of rumormongering and
mudslinging with ulterior motives."

    The spokesman neither confirmed nor denied whether some of
the key democracy leaders had been formally charged, or whether
they might be brought to trial at a later date. It is possible
that Beijing is still betting on what dissident Fang Lizhi has
called the "Chinese amnesia," the tendency of the country's
people to forget past repression. That wager has paid off
before. China's leaders seem to be hoping that the rest of the
world will be equally forgetful.