A Wife and Mother's Concern October 24, 2002 Earlier this year when my husband, Yang Jianli, decided to go to China using someone else's passport, I instinctively disagreed with him. I feared that I would never see him again and that our two children, now seven and 10, might grow up without a father by their side. Just the prospect of raising two children on my own, while fighting a constant struggle to free my husband from jail in faraway China, made me dizzy. I felt the burden would be more than I could bear. But even as we were disagreeing, I never doubted for a second that my husband was doing the right thing by his conscience. My husband, a U.S. permanent resident with a doctorate in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley and a doctorate in political economy from Harvard, was well aware of the choice he was making. I realized that his was a rational choice, not one made on a whim. Over the years, he had published more than 100 articles discussing the principles and ideas of non-violent struggle. The most difficult obstacle in my fight to find support for my husband has been the notion that since Jianli entered China using a false passport, he broke the law and therefore deserves his punishment. I have received widespread and heartwarming sympathy and support from around the world, but this idea has lurked in the background, going against all my sense of fairness. Perhaps those who think this way are unaware of his whole story. In 1989, while my husband was still a student at Berkeley, the Chinese government moved troops into Tiananmen Square. Merely feeling outraged was not enough for Jianli -- he had to take action. After organizing the Chinese students at his school, he traveled to Beijing to openly represent their support to the students there, and was present when the troops finally cracked down on June 4. That was his first step onto the path that eventually led him to "break the law." The case of Yang Jianli vs. the Chinese government is only part of a story that is true for many other Chinese citizens as well. The Chinese government first used tanks and machine guns to kill innocent people, then blacklisted any Chinese citizens who publicly opposed its violent suppression in order to keep them from ever returning to China. My husband was on that list. The government repeatedly denied his application to renew his Chinese passport. To make matters worse, the Chinese government claims that overseas critics like Jianli are not only out of touch, but enemies of the Chinese people. It claims that people like my husband have been away from China for so long they do not realize that the current human-rights situation is "the best in the nation's history," and that they only help China's enemies by criticizing China. Has the Chinese government acted with fairness and justice? If Jianli has "broken the law," let us say for the moment that he deserves to be "punished" for his action. Then he deserves an open and fair trial according to Chinese law. But in fact, Jianli has been held incommunicado and without charge for six months, well exceeding the legal limit. In fact, I have never received any direct news of my husband's whereabouts or his status, or even if he is in good health. It's as though he just dropped off the face of the planet. In my attempts to find him, I flew to China, only to be forced back on the next flight. Only through diplomatic pressure has the simple reply come that he is being detained. Where is the respect for the rule of law? This kind of behavior by a government is not only illegal but is simply uncivilized. In retrospect, I guess Jianli could have stayed in his ivory tower. Then he would perhaps be a math professor by now, safe at home with his wife and children. But his sense of outrage from the events of 1989 changed the course of his life forever. Instead, he has devoted his life to fighting for a better future for his beloved motherland, studying political economy and government and founding the Foundation for China in the 21st Century. As part of his work, his immediate motive for returning to China by any means possible this last spring was the under-reported but massive worker demonstrations in northern China taking place at that time. After Jianli entered China (successfully we thought), he called me at home. In an excited voice, he told me he was calling while riding a bicycle in Tiananmen Square. His simple joy came through despite the din in the background, and sent me into tears as I thought of all the years of suffering and struggle that had led up to this moment. But a few days later I lost contact with him. As a concerned wife and mother, I may have disagreed with his decision to enter China, but as a person born in China, I firmly stand by his choice to do what he believed to be right: He acted not out of a rejection of the rule of law, but to take back a right. I cannot say it better than Mahatma Gandhi, who Jianli so admires, "Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen. He dares not give it up without ceasing to be a man." Ms. Fu lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Updated October 24, 2002 -------------------------- |
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