A student leader of the 1989 democracy protests in China has been arrested on fraud charges, his brother said yesterday, as authorities brace for the 20th anniversary of the demonstrations.
Zhou Yongjun (周勇軍) was a leader of the Beijing Students’ Autonomous Union, one of the most visible groups in the protests at Tiananmen Square, which ended on June 4, 1989, in an army crackdown that killed hundreds, possibly thousands.
Zhou’s family was told of the charges against him yesterday by police in southwestern China, more than seven months after he was reportedly seized while trying to return from the US, his brother Zhou Lin (周林) said.
“They told us the charges concerned fraud, but we are still unclear on the situation. We are waiting for more information,” Zhou Lin said by telephone.
He said his brother was charged in the family’s home city of Suining in Sichuan Province.
He said Zhou has a US “green card” denoting permanent residence status there, a fact that could make his arrest a potential source of friction with Washington.
A spokesman at the US embassy in Beijing said it had no comment on the case “at the present time.”
Zhou, now 41, has lived in the US for many years, his brother said.
Zhou was seized by authorities in the southern city of Shenzhen on Sept. 30 as he tried to enter China to visit his family, according to reports by the China Human Rights Defenders, a network of domestic and overseas activists.
Zhou Lin said he did not know how his brother could have committed fraud in China given that he had been out of the country for so long.
Several telephone calls to police headquarters in Suining went unanswered.
In related news, an estimated 30 men remain in prison for clashes with China’s military when it suppressed the Tiananmen Square democracy movement, a rights group said yesterday, sharply lowering its estimate of those still jailed from the crackdown.
The Dui Hua Foundation previously estimated that 60 Tiananmen prisoners were still in jail, but new information about prisoner releases from the Chinese government and a Chinese human rights campaigner prompted the San Francisco-based group to revise the figure.
The prisoners were jailed for burning army trucks, stealing equipment or attacking soldiers as the military advanced toward student-led protests on Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.
Most of the prisoners were young workers at the time of the demonstrations. Their continued imprisonment underscores the way the communist leadership handled the crackdown — harshly punishing the ordinary Chinese who joined the protests, while mainly giving lighter treatment to the students and others in the educated elite who led them.
In a statement, Dui Hua gave the names of 16 men either confirmed or believed to still be in jail based on information from the Chinese government or former inmates. It said there are likely about a dozen additional June 4 prisoners whose names are still not publicly known.
Dui Hua called on China to release the men, noting that many were sentenced to death or to life in prison after being convicted of counterrevolutionary sabotage and hooliganism — charges that were removed from China’s criminal code in a 1997 revision.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
RSS