Letter from U.S. Congress members to President Bush

U.S. Congress members

The Honorable George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC

Dear President Bush,

We write to respectfully ask for your direct assistance in the case of Dr. Yang Jianli, the internationally renowned scholar and pro-democracy activist who is currently serving a five-year sentence in the People's Republic of China, when you meet with President Hu Jintao in Beijing later this week.

Dr. Yang Jianli is a man of considerable professional achievement, with a wonderful family in the United States, who put himself in jeopardy by going to China to try to bring to his fellow Chinese the kind of rights he had come fully to understand and enjoy here in the U.S.

Since his initial detention in China in April 2002, there have been consistent and considerable efforts within the U.S. Congress, from the State Department, and internationally in pressing for Dr. Yang's release from prison. Because these efforts to date have been unsuccessful, we are now at the point where we believe that absent a direct request from you to President Hu, we will not be successful in bringing Dr. Yang home to his family in the United States.

Over the past few years, the u.s. Senate and House unanimously passed resolutions calling for Dr. Yang's immediate release and expressing the view that the United States should make his release a top concern of U.S. foreign policy; the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Dr. Yang was being held in violation of international law; and the State Department has continued to raise Dr. Yang's case with senior Chinese officials.

We believe it is important for the Chinese government to understand that as long as they continue to imprison Yang Jianli, as long as they keep this man from his wife and children, and as long as they demonstrate that they fear a simple statement of the validity of basic human rights, the People's Republic of China, which has every expectation, given its size and its economy, given its potential military power, given its culture and its history, to be treated seriously as a member in good standing among a community of nations, will not have that place in the world community to which it aspires.

With that as a basis, we strongly and respectfully urge you to discuss Dr. Yang's case with President Hu when you meet with him later this week. We believe, as we said, that nothing short of your direct involvement in this case will secure Dr. Yang's release.

SENATOR JON KYL
SENATOR BARBARA A. MIKULSKI
REP. HENRY J HYDE
REP. TOM LANTOS
REP. BARNEY FRANK
REP. WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT
REP. MICHAEL E. CAPUANO

The PDF version is here.

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Source: "yangjianli.com".