Tong Yi
Tong Yi is a woman from China who is about 29 years old now. Like many women from China she has come to the US as a student and she will be beginning graduate work at Columbia University this fall. But what makes this newsworthy is her past and that she made it to the US at all.Tong Yi was a participant in the 1989 democracy movement. Later, after Wei Jingsheng was released from jail in 1993 after his first sentence she got a job with him typing up his writings and letters from prison. These now have been translated to english and published (see Wei's Words from Prison). Later she became his secretary full time (and some stuff I have read implied they may have had a relationship but I don't know anything about that).
Wei had been released because the Communist Party wanted to make their image better because they were trying to host the Olympics and the vote was coming up on that. After Wei was free he did not keep quiet and met with some US officials and members of the press. Soon he was back in jail and Tong Yi also was sent to jail.
She was released from jail a few months ago but there were reports about her saying that she had become a non-person. Her official documents had been confiscated so she could not leave the country to go to the US for school or do much anything else. But she is now here and there was a long interview with her in the China News Digest. The interview was conducted in Chinese and was also translated to english. It covers her experiences and also asks a fair amount about Wei Jingsheng. It covers her experiences in prison, including beatings. (Wei also has been beaten up as well including a recent brutal beating). Also talks about Wei's meetings with US officials when he was free in 1994.
Upon meeting Wei she had this to say
He lost all teeth. So when you just looked at his physical self, you felt that he might be a creature from Mars. He was curious about everything, because he had been in isolation for a long time. That's my first impression.The interview covers a lot of things including what happened immediately before Wei was imprisoned the second time. He met with John Kerry in January of 94 and later he met with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Shuttuck on Feb. 27, 1994, who was in Beijing preparing for the later visit of then Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Shattuck told Wei that the US greatly appreciated his opinions. Of interest is that Shattuck asked Wei "under the current circumstances, do you think it's more important to exert the pressure on the Chinese government or to provide direct support for democracy advocates and dissidents like yourself? " Tong related Wei's response as this:Mr. WEI's reply to the question was: They were both very important; but under the current circumstances it would be more important to keep the pressure on the Chinese government. Without that no direct support to the Chinese dissidents would ever get into China. That was a very realistic analysis, wasn't it? Direct support without pressures on the Chinese government would probably put those dissidents in a very dangerous position. That was the implicit meaning of his answer. So when Mr. Shuttuck asked Mr. WEI what kind of message he wished to convey to President Clinton, Mr. WEI said: On the human rights issue, when you talk to the Chinese government, you must be at least as firm as the Chinese government in your stand.It is interesting to note that this was the time when the tough talking Clinton who campaigned against george Bush's "coddling of the Beijing butchers" decided to de-link human rights and trade. Understandably Tong and others felt betrayed by the US.If you didn't intend to support WEI Jingsheng in the first place, that would be fine - we could work our way out gradually. We could do without your support, right? We could pace our steps - at least we wouldn't be wound up that quickly.Wei was detained days after Shattuck's visit in 94, but released after a few days. But it took only a month for him to be back in jail. And Wei sits in jail today serving another 14 year prison sentence. It is clear that this second sentence was due to his meetings with people like Shattuck and Kerry.But since you had already taken the first step to support, your failure to follow through with the next steps (and, worse, your back paddling) would endanger the most prominent and influential dissident who had already paid dearly in his life. You could have done nothing; you could have not come over to meet him, you could have shown him no symbolic support. We could do it ourselves. As dissidents we certainly want to accumulate as much strength as possible. The more, the better. It doesn't matter where the source is - domestic or international, right?
If you, the international side, didn't want to fulfill your duty to support, you shouldn't have actively arranged the meeting with WEI Jingsheng. What happened was that you went ahead to meet with WEI Jingsheng and then stopped there without any back-up support; to make things worse, you adopted a policy to unlink human rights with trade. This simply undid all the pressure kept on the CCP for so long. It was gone just like that. What was left were the dissidents on the chopping board of the CCP. It could do whatever it wanted with those people in its grip - sentence them the way it wanted and jail them as long as it wanted to.
Today, August 13, 1997 a similar visit is being undertaken by Sandy Berger the US National Security Advisor. He is in BeiDaiHe meeting with CCP officials to work out the details for Jiang Zemin's US visit in October. The news is full of reports ( here's one ) of what dissidents there are being detained or tailed by the secret police everywhere they go. This is so that no replay of visits like Wei's to US officials will take place like they did back in 1994. The CCP learned from the events of three years ago. Did the Clinton administration.
To read the entire interview click here
The Chinese (simplified) original is here at the CND site
The CND interview included a piece written by Wei called "The Wolf and the Lamb" which was published in the New York Times on November 18, 1993. I have included it here
I like Wei Jingsheng because he says things that are so obvious and straightforward and right. I myself noted how the current mainland regime now like to say how there are different values so human rights aren't important for China, but it was the CCP that came to powering trumpeting the cause of human rights. Wei put it like this:
The present leaders were the most outspoken group of men, shouting their support of human rights and democracy before they ascended to power. But their subsequent dictatorship made clear that they have no intention of making good on the promises they once made to the masses.
