Human rights advocacy groups and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are to commemorate the 24th anniversary of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre today with a vigil at Liberty Square in Taipei and a forum on China’s human rights situation.
The groups, which include the Taiwan Association for China Human Rights, Taiwan Democracy Watch, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and a student group for the promotion of democracy in China, yesterday said this year’s event would have a different focus from previous years.
They used to seek the political rehabilitation of the victims of the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing on the nights of June 4 and June 5, 1989, but this year they said they would demand that those responsible for the massacre be held accountable by Beijing.
“Because Beijing has never stopped oppressing dissidents, demanding their rehabilitation is a passive move, which is why we have decided to take our demands a step further this year by highlighting accountability,” Jin Yu (金昱), a representative of the student advocacy group, told a press conference.
Wang Dan (王丹), an exiled leader of the Tiananmen protests who is now a visiting assistant professor at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, announced the launch of a Web site called laqingdan (“making a list”) to help seek transitional justice and “lay down a solid foundation for future political order.”
Wang wrote in a press release that the Web site (www.laqingdan.net) would list cases of state violence, corruption, human-rights infringement and anti-democracy actions that have occurred since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. It would also list the Chinese officials who allegedly committed the violations.
The lists would be submitted to the UN’s Human Rights Council and governments of Western democracies, Wang said.
Democracy advocates would also urge those governments to deny entry to Chinese officials on the list and freeze their overseas assets, Wang added.
Wang is to be one of the panelists in a DPP-organized seminar today on human rights in China, which will examine the development of human rights in China after the 1989 crackdown.
The seminar is a prelude to nine meetings on China affairs, which are scheduled to be held from June 20 in response to the public’s call for a “clear and definite” DPP policy on China.
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