WASHINGTON (BP)–Chinese authorities have freed a man jailed for smuggling Bibles into mainland China in the latest of several positive gestures taken by Beijing prior to President Bush’s visit this month, CNSNews.com reported Feb. 11.
Although Hong Kong businessman Li Guangqiang was released Feb. 9 on medical grounds, his two co-accused — both mainland Chinese citizens and members of the unauthorized church that had ordered the Bibles — remain in prison.
Li told a news conference on his return to Hong Kong that he hoped Lin Xifu and Yu Zhudi also would be freed. The two were sentenced to three years each for their roles in helping Li smuggle more than 30,000 Bibles into mainland China last April and May.
In the same trial in January, Li was jailed for two years. But the official Xinhua news agency reported Feb. 9 that a municipal court had ruled that he could serve his time at home because of poor health. Li has Hepatitis-B.
The three had originally faced charges that carried the death penalty — “using a cult to undermine enforcement of the law.” Amid international pressure and expressions of concern from the White House, prosecutors amended the charges to far less serious ones.
Li, Lin and Yu are all members of a large underground church known as the Local Church, or disparagingly by the authorities as the Shouters. Beijing listed the group as a “cult” in 1983.
Li, in a Feb. 10 news conference, defended his church group, saying it held beliefs shared by other Christian denominations and was not an evil cult, as branded by Beijing. China allows Christian practice only through a “patriotic” Protestant organization and a Catholic church whose bishops pledge loyalty to the state, not to the Vatican.
Analysts earlier predicted that the Chinese would find a way to release Li before Bush visits the nation on February 21 and 22.
At his news conference, Li thanked Bush “for expressing concerns about me,” as well as the efforts of the Hong Kong regional government. He avoided attacking China, however, saying Chinese officials had been in their rights as he had failed to complete required customs documents before taking the Bibles into China.
The court in China’s Fujian province which freed Li said he would be under state surveillance while he served out his “sentence” at home.
But although Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule in 1997, it maintains a measure of autonomy and its capitalist system. Hong Kong media reported Feb. 11 that the region’s security bureau said it would not carry out any observation of Li.
Li, who was arrested last May, was at the time placed on a list of dissidents Washington wanted the Chinese to free.
In recent years, the United States has focused increasingly on China’s human rights and religious freedom record. At the annual U.N. Human Rights Commission gathering, the United States has for the past decade sponsored a resolution slamming Beijing for rights violations. China invariably garners enough support to prevent a vote.
With this year’s UNHRC meeting in Geneva looming in March, Beijing mounted a pre-emptive diplomatic offensive during the Feb. 9-10 weekend, publishing the first edition of a magazine titled Human Rights.
The magazine carried an interview with Zhao Qizheng, director-general of an official propaganda body called the State Council Information Office.
Zhao said China is willing to hear criticism from outside of its human rights record, but he opposed any attempt to “use human rights as an excuse to interfere in China’s internal affairs, disrupt the country’s social stability, sabotage its international prestige and hamper its development.”
Zhao said there is a great difference in understanding of human rights between China and the West.
“The fundamental reason lies in the fact that some Westerners, basing themselves entirely on Western views, use their political system and their way of dealing with human rights as the sole criterion to measure China’s human rights conditions.”
In an editorial Feb. 11, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post said Beijing did not want the world community to focus on the right to worship freely. “Rather, it wants the international community to pay attention to more ‘down to earth’ human rights issues such as subsistence and illiteracy,” the paper said.
“[But] until and unless the mainland allows its people to practice their faiths, it cannot be said to have abided fully by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” the paper said.
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Goodenough is the Pacific Rim bureau chief with CNSNews.com, on the Internet at www.cnsnews.com. Used by permission.
