Overseas dissidents urge NPC to drop Li 3/03/1998BEIJING: Nearly 500 Chinese dissidents living abroad have sent an open letter to Beijing protesting at the pending appointment of Premier Li Peng as parliamentary chairman, according to a petition received by AFP on Monday.
``Li Peng's reputation is very bad, both in China and abroad,'' said the letter signed by dissidents including the ``father of Chinese democracy'', Wei Jingsheng, and key figures such as Bao Ge, Wang Bingzheng, Wang Juntao, Wang Rowang, Wu'er Kaixi and Xiao Qiang.
Mr Li, believed to have ordered the Tiananmen crackdown, is due to become chairman of the ninth National Peoples' Congress (NPC) at the opening of the annual session on Thursday.
``Li Peng acted badly in regard to the 1989 student movement and he caused confrontation between the people and government by proclaiming martial law,'' the letter said.
``Some members of the Standing Committee of the NPC called for his resignation. But to this day Li Peng has never accounted for his actions to the congress, China's highest political body,'' the letter, received by fax from the United States, said. He had therefore shown contempt for the ``NPC, its deputies and for the people''.
``He is the person the least qualified to become NPC president,'' it said.
The letter calls on deputies to refuse the arrangement between the NPC and the 15th Communist Party Congress last year which allows Mr Li to become parliamentary chairman. Under the constitution, the premier is forbidden from standing for a third five-year term.
Several dissidents have been arrested in the past few weeks for speaking out against Mr Li.
Mao Guoliang from eastern Zhejiang province, was arrested and then released. Lin Xinshu, from southeastern Fujian province, is still in detention after being arrested last week. - AFP
MORE DISSIDENTS SAID ARRESTED IN MAINLAND CHINA New York, March 4 (CNA) Sheng Lianchin, a dissident from Hefei, Anhui Province, in mainland China, who disappeared on Feb. 25, has been arrested by mainland Chinese public security police, while dissidents Zheng Baohe and Zhang Jenkang from Xian City, Shaanxi Province, have also been detained and investigated, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China.
An urgent message sent from the information center to the world media on Tuesday said that Sheng's family informed the center that Sheng was under arrest, but his location was not disclosed.
It was reported that Sheng last week submitted a proposal to the National People's Congress (NPC) demanding that mainland China's Prime Minister Li Peng be prevented from taking the post of NPC chairman. Sheng, 37, assistant procurator of the Anhui Provincial People's Procuratorate, was previously imprisoned for 17 months in 1992.
The information center also learned that Zheng was seized by public security police at his home in Xian City, but his whereabouts were not immediately available either. Zheng and Zhang, together with seven other dissidents in the city, submitted a proposal last Thursday to the NPC demanding the restoration of the honor and reputations of Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang, both former general secretaries of the Communist Party of China (CPC) who fell from favor because of factional infighting. In addition, the dissidents demanded the release of all political dissidents in mainland China.
Zhang, a lawyer, has taken part in many pro-democracy protests in recent years, while Zheng, a high-school teacher in Xian City, was jailed for a year after the Tiananmen Square demonstration, and was detained again in January for his intention to run for election to the NPC.
During the past week, according the information center, at least nine dissidents have been arrested for their submission of proposals to the NPC. (By David Wang and Eva Chen)