A Chinese political activist who participated in the June 4, 1989, pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing was released yesterday after serving nine years in prison, his mother said.
Li Hai, 50, was sentenced in 1996 for divulging state secrets after he compiled lists of people imprisoned in the wave of arrests that followed the bloody crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.
"He came back this morning," Li's mother, Gong Liwen, said. "It's a very happy occasion but there's still no freedom. Every time we go out, there are people watching us."
Gong's telephone was repeatedly disconnected during the interview, one of the ways activists say the government monitors them.
Hundreds, if not thousands, died when Chinese troops attacked protesters who had gathered for weeks on the square in the center of Beijing to agitate for a more open political system and an end to corruption.
As the 15-year anniversary of the event approaches, China's government appears to be trying to prevent any public memorial by tightening their watch on political activists and relatives of people killed in the crackdown by detaining them at home and tapping their telephones.
The New York-based Human Rights in China (HRIC) said that police have warned Gong to ensure that his release from Liangxiang Prison in Beijing does not spark any "unanticipated events."
"Li Hai has already suffered unreasonably for peaceful activities that are not even considered crimes in free and democratic societies," the group's president, Liu Qing, said in a statement.
"We urge the Chinese government not to use the June 4 anniversary as a pretext to deprive Li Hai of his liberty any longer than fulfillment of his sentence demands," Liu wrote.
An official on duty at the prison said he "wasn't clear" on the case. A woman who answered the telephone at Beijing police headquarters said she had no information.
Li, then a graduate philosophy student at the elite Peking University, was a strong advocate of the democracy movement. He spent 18 months in prison soon after the protests, HRIC said. Upon his release, he helped other political prisoners by contacting their families and making their plight known to the international community, the group said.
He was arrested again in 1995 for those activities and sentenced to nine years in prison.
Li was subjected to severe physical and mental abuse and spent most of his sentence in solitary confinement or under close monitoring, HRIC said.
Gong said Li's health had improved in the last two months because he was allowed to exercise.
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