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China can't fool everyone: Wang Dan

Prominent Tiananmen student leader Wang Dan (王丹) brushed off on Thursday an accusation by Beijing that he is a "Taiwan spy" as an old tactic which he "had long become used to" and which was not worthy of a response.

Wang said that from the first day he took part in pro-democracy activities in China, the Beijing regime had used insults and defamatory language in an attempt to discredit him.

So the latest accusation of spying for Taiwan came as no surprise.

Wang said he was not interested in wasting time answering the accusation. Instead, he quoted former US president Abraham Lincoln: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

Wang, who is now working on a doctoral degree at Harvard University, said that Beijing's attacks on him had not changed his affection for Taiwan, and that he would never pass up the opportunity to co-operate with people who support the ideals which he and young democracy activists from all over China share.

Wang said, however, that he and Wu'er Kaixi (吾爾開希) -- another student activist who has had close links with Taiwan since the 1989 massacre -- would be pleased to co-operate with people outside of China if no conditions were placed on the relationship and as long as those people were not intelligence agents.

Wang and Wu'er were attending a memorial and a press conference held in Washington, DC, on Thursday marking the 15th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Wang and Wu'er said they would be willing to return to China as long as no conditions were placed on them.

Wu'er said his parents were getting old but the Beijing authorities had refused them permission to leave the country to visit him. Nor had the authorities allowed him to return to Beijing to see them.

Saying that returning to one's home country is a citizen's basic right, Wu'er called on the international community to exert greater pressure on the Beijing authorities so that dissidents living overseas could return home.

Wang, founder of the Chinese Constitutional Reform Association in the US, said China should not focus on economic development at the expense of human rights.

"We want to remind China that if they want to be a powerful country, they will have to follow international rules. And the most basic rule is to respect human rights," Wang said at the press conference.

Wang, 35, has been to Taiwan many times since he first visited the country on March 18, 1999. He visited Taiwan twice last year.

He was in Taipei in January last year to launch two new books, one a collection of poems and the other a work of prose. Both are published by Locus Publishing in Taipei.

Wang said at the time that he preferred to call himself a poet, adding that "literature is what enables me to survive."

He was in Taipei again last July for six weeks at the invitation of the Taipei City Government as an artist-in-residence.

Wang was jailed in July 1989 for his role in the Tiananmen pro-democracy demonstrations and was released in February 1993. He was arrested again in October 1996 and sentenced to an 11-year prison term.

In April 1998, he was released on parole on medical grounds and allowed to travel to the US for treatment -- a move that effectively sent him into exile.
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