SOH News

Breaking News-CCP Stop Press Conference for Human Rights

On the morning of February the 28th, a press conference for “Human Rights Situation Announcement” was to be held at East Bridge of Gongyi in Beijing. However, the Communist authorities deployed a large number of police to besiege and intercept the participants, stopping the conference. Several hundreds of people were arrested.

Petitioners from all over China attended the pre-arranged press conference entitled “Human Rights Situation Announcement” with overseas reporters conducting interviews on site. The petitioners published an open letter to the two sessions of CCP conference on the 27th of February. This has been the largest petitioners assembly in recent years.

A petitioner named Chen Lian-Qing from Hebei Province came to the assembly by bus. Four or five buses came and several hundred people were arrested in total. He said that some petitioners were arrested as soon as they got off the bus. The number of the arrested is unknown. He said that over 20 people left with him and they passed the stop they were supposed to get off at. All the people that took the bus before him went missing.

Petitioners said that the authorities had been aware that they would be coming long before. In the morning the assembly venue at East Bridge of Beijing Gongyi was already crowded with policemen and plainclothes police. The traffic police and the foreign affairs police had intercepted the majority of the foreign journalists with the excuse of ID verifications. The journalists were unable to approach the petitioners.

On the 27th of February, a joint open letter of petition by over 10,000 people from various provinces had been published over the Internet. It called for social justice and prevention from further human rights violations. The open letter stated the situation of how Beijing authorities handle the petitioners. It stated 1) to implement the fundamental rights granted to citizens by “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and “Constitution of the PRC,” and to protect freedom of speech, publication, assembly, association, procession and demonstration of the citizens; 2) to abolish the law-breaching ‘reformation’ through hard labour system and to release all innocent petitioners from jails; and 3) to revise “Regulations for Letters and Complaints” and to end all practices that forbid and suppress petitioners from appeals.

The authorities arrested the open letters spokesman, Wang Guilan in the early hours on the 28th of February.

Another open letter spokesman Zhao Jingzhou said that they just raised some issues to the state officials who would not only deny their complaints, but also arrest petitioners for ‘reform’ through hard labour or detentions and even torture appealers in mental hospitals.

The above news is brought to you by Li Xin-Hui and Ming Wei and hosted by Wilma Reynolds for Breaking News on the SOH Radio Network.