Retired communists urge China dissident review

Monday, January 25, 2010

AFP
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People hold a candlelight vigil for activist Liu Xiaobo in Hong Kong (AFP Photo)

BEIJING — Four retired Communist Party officials have signed an open letter to China's government calling for a review of the case of jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, one of their relatives said Monday.

The letter penned by Hu Jiwei, former editor of the party newspaper the People's Daily, suggested that Liu's Christmas Day subversion conviction violated some of the principles the old revolutionaries had fought for.

Liu, 54, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion after he helped write Charter 08, a bold call for political change and democracy in China released in 2008.

"If the democracy, the rule of law and the human rights that we old comrades have struggled for our entire lives is cast aside, then our hearts will never be at peace," the letter said.

"We believe that we must propose to the incumbent leaders that the legal issues and the evidence of conviction in the Liu case made by the Beijing court be reviewed."

The letter was posted last week on the website of the Independent Chinese Pen Centre, a group of writers that Liu once headed.

The signatories could not immediately be reached by AFP on Monday.

However, the family of He Fang, one of the four, confirmed that the elderly academic had signed the letter.

"He signed the letter, but he does not want to take any calls on this," a woman at He's home who identified herself only as a "family member" told AFP by telephone.

Liu has appealed the conviction, according to his lawyers.

The four signatories to the letter were all in their 80s and 90s.

Besides Hu and He, who is an honorary member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, they included Li Pu, a former deputy chief of the official Xinhua News Agency, and Dai Huang, a former Xinhua senior reporter.

Liu's conviction drew widespread criticism overseas including from the European Union and the United States. Liu's lawyers said the verdict violated China's own constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech.

"If the judicial authorities violate the constitution, don't understand the party's history, cannot draw a difference between right and wrong and manufacture wrong and unjust cases, then the image of the nation will be seriously tarnished," the letter said.