  2002 Annual Report |
|
Asia |
| Europe |
| Mid-East |
| Africa |
| Americas |
The historian Dr. Xu Zerong, a past member of the Provincial Academy of Social Sciences and of Zhongshan University, co-founder of the Chinese Social Sciences Quarterly and researcher for the Xinhua News Agency, was detained in June of 2000 and ultimately charged with illegal publishing and leaking state secrets. It appeared that the charges were drawn from his earlier Ph.D. dissertation for Oxford University on Chinese military intervention in the Korean War. Aside from the illegality of his arrest, as it appears that Dr. Xu was acting well within his internationally recognized rights to freedom of expression, Dr. Xu was also held without charges for a year and a half. He was also denied any family visits during and after this lengthy pre-trial detention, and finally sentenced to 13 years in prison. Our message to the Chinese authorities urged his immediate release and, failing that, access to his family while awaiting the results of the legal appeal. The imminent retirement of Chinese president Jiang Zemin later provided another opportunity to write and to ask for clemency for Dr. Xu.
On word that a psychology student at Beijing Normal University, Liu Di, was being detained at an unknown location, we wrote to the competent authorities decrying her treatment. Citing reports that she was imprisoned in retaliation for her Internet posting of material protesting another arrest, that of the computer engineer Huang Qi, we termed such action a stark violation of internationally accepted human rights standards. We urged assurance of her physical safety, and an end to her incommunicado detention allowing her access to family and legal counsel.
A petition, spearheaded by CCS and signed by 830 individuals affiliated with the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society as well as our group, was sent to highly placed authorities. It appealed on behalf of nine scientists and students imprisoned on varying charges associated with the nonviolent expression of their beliefs. We initiated, researched, and solicited the co-sponsorship of the above-cited scientific bodies for this important petition.
Myanmar
Dr. Salai Than Tun, arrested in Rangoon as he staged a one-man protest calling for democratic elections, was the subject of an appeal early in the year. He is a distinguished professor of entomology and agronomy, targeted by the government in part because of his establishment of an agricultural training program called the Myanmar Integrated Rural Development Association (MIRDA). This program, because of its support by foreign groups, has come under suspicion by the Myanmar government. We asked in particular that Dr. Salai be given access to his family and lawyer, which he had been denied, and that he be protected from torture while in the notorious Insein Prison in Rangoon. When he was subsequently convicted and sentenced to a of seven-year term, we again protested his illegal and unmerited punishment for exercising his internationally-recognized right to freedom of expression and association.
Sri Lanka
On learning that a young zoologist, Maldeni Kamkanamlage Piyratne, was beaten to death by the police for unknown reasons, we called upon the authorities to investigate the case and to prevent similar instances of police brutality in the future.
Bangladesh
We decried the imprisonment of two men, one, Dr. Mohiuddin Alamgir, an eminent economist and cabinet member for the previous government, and the second, Mr. Bahauddin Nasim, private secretary to the head of the opposition party. The legality of their arrests was a question for the courts, but meanwhile they remained indefinitely in police custody while their cases wound through the Bangladeshi court system. That Dr. Alamgir and Mr. Nasim not only were cruelly tortured by the police but also were refused competent and independent medical care made our call for their prompt release all the more necessary. Recently, Dr. Alamgir was released after six months' imprisonment in response to the High Court's repeated rulings that his arrest and detention for participating in demonstrations was illegal.
Uzbekistan
Two human-rights workers, Elena Urlaeva, a member of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, and Larissa Vdovina, were held at a psychiatric hospital in Tashkent against their will, in retaliation for joining a peaceful demonstration at the Ministry of Justice building. Six others were arrested at the same time, but released immediately. Ms. Urlaeva and Ms. Vdovina, however, were sent to the psychiatric facility for forcible drug treatment. Shocked at this perversion of the beneficent purposes of a hospital in the service of repressive political goals and at the use of compulsory medication as a means of punishment, we urged the authorities to release these two women and to prevent any such further abuse.
