A Brief Biography of Ding ZilinIFCSS Ding Zilin was born on February 20, 1936 in Jiangsu Province, China. She received her diploma of journalism from the People’s University of China (PUC) in 1960 and immediately joined the PUC as a junior instructor. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), she, along with her colleagues, was sent to do labor in the countryside. Ding Zilin joined the faculty of the PUC as a lecturer in 1978 and then became an associate professor of philosophy in 1986. She was forced to take a mandatory retirement from teaching in 1995. During the bloody massacre on Tiananmen Square in 1989, her 17-year-old son was killed by a soldier's bullet on Chang An Avenue on the night of June 3, 1989. Soon after that Professor Ding began her search for other victims' families. Her reports, published both in Chinese and in English, have so far contained detailed information about 176 dead victims and their surviving families, as well as information about 71 people who sustained long-lasting injuries. Professor Ding has shown unprecedented courage to collect international humanitarian funds since 1989 and provide it to the struggling surviving families and the victims’ children for their growth and education. In 1999, Professor Ding launched the Tiananmen Mothers Campaign. Professor Ding is the recipient of the following awards: 1. The Democratic Education Foundation Award (San Francisco, USA, 1994)
2. Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights Award of the New York Academy of Sciences
(USA, 1995)
http://www.aps.org/intaff/cifs/cifsar95.html, 3. The Award of the Freedom Foundation (France, 1996) 4. The Award of the Foundation of Freedom and Human Rights (Switzerland, 1998)
5. The Award of the Alexandra Lange Foundation (Italy, 1999)
6. The Award of Democratic Courage (Asia, 2000)
7. The Truman-Reagan Freedom Award (2000)
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