China activists reported taken from homesAudra Ang June 3, 2004 BEIJING -- Three Chinese activists have been removed from their homes ahead of the anniversary tomorrow of the 1989 crackdown on prodemocracy demonstrations in Beijing, a human rights group said yesterday. The dissidents have been forced to stay in hotels outside Beijing, said the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, based in Hong Kong. Two other prominent activists, Liu Xiaobo and Jiang Yanyong, also may have been taken away by authorities, it said. Phone calls to Liu's home were not answered. An answering machine picked up at Jiang's number. Liu is well known for his essays criticizing the government for charging Internet dissidents with subversion. Jiang, a military surgeon, petitioned the government to admit it made mistakes in crushing the Tiananmen protests. Also, the mother of Wang Dan, a leader of the 1989 student protests, was warned by authorities to "be careful," the center said, without elaborating. Activists say Chinese authorities have tightened surveillance in recent weeks and have forced departures from the capital to try to prevent public memorials as the anniversary approaches. Hundreds, if not thousands, died in the Tiananmen crackdown, which Beijing has branded a counterrevolutionary riot. Activists Wang Guoqi, Zhang Chunzhu, and Yang Jing were moved into hotels outside Beijing in the past week, the center said. Wang, a labor activist sentenced to 11 years in prison in 1994, was taken to a hotel in the northeastern city of Dalian, it said. Yang was moved last weekend, although his location was not known late yesterday, the center said. He was imprisoned for eight years for helping print a reformist magazine during the 1978-1979 Democracy Wall movement.
Meanwhile, Yang Jianli, 40, a Boston-based activist jailed in China, said he would not appeal his five-year prison
sentence on spying charges because he considers his trial illegal. A Chinese court sentenced Yang on May 13 for
allegedly entering China illegally and spying for Taiwan. Yang, a Chinese citizen with permanent US residency, denied the charges. In a letter released this week, he said his imprisonment in China for more than two years, the trial, and the sentence have violated his human rights and broken the law. "The question of whether or not to appeal doesn't exist to me," he said in the letter, translated from Chinese by his wife's lawyers. "I simply refuse to be put on show any longer with the so-called 'People's Court.' "
He said that he had not been allowed to communicate privately with his Chinese lawyer and that the deadline for issuing a verdict in his case expired last December.
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