For Immediate Release

Date: 2/9/03

Contact: Timothy Cooper

Tel: 202/361-0989

DR. WANG BINGZHANG SENTENCED TO LIFE IMPRISONMENT FOR PRO-DEMOCRACY ACTIVITIES; CHINESE DISSIDENTS AROUND THE GLOBE DECRY SENTENCE AS AN AFFRONT TO WORLD CIVILIZATION

Washington, DC—Pro-democracy dissidents from the Free China Movement and the China Democracy Party denounced the harsh sentence handed down today by Chinese authorities to the founder of the overseas pro-democracy movement, Dr. Wang Bingzhang.

Dr. Wang was kidnapped on the Vietnam/Chinese border last June and taken into China by Chinese agents who had lured him and two other traveling companions from Thailand to Vietnam, where they had arranged to meet with pro-democracy labor leaders from China.

“The entire China democracy movement, including Dr. Wang’s daughter, Qing Yang, and his mother and father, deplores the sentence handed down today in the case of Dr. Wang Bingzhang by the Beijing government. It declares the sentence to be an affront to the conscience of humanity and to freedom-loving nations of the world. A hero of the overseas democracy movement has been unjustly denied his freedom, while a rogue nation that stoops to the crime of kidnapping to secure his silence is free to oppress another day. We demand that Dr. Wang be set free. We urge the United States to do everything within its power to work for his immediate release. China must hear from the community of democratic nations around the world, calling for his freedom today.” (Statement by the overseas China Democracy Movement)

“Today’s life sentence imposed on Dr. Wang Bingzhang represents a desperate act of a tragically flawed nation. This barbarous act demonstrates that totalitarian China is so intent on keeping itself in power that it brazenly-- and seemingly with complete international impunity-- kidnaps a national of the United States— in a third country, carries him across the border into China against his will, detains him there for six months, proceeds to try him on trumped up charges that bear no relationship to reality and without the benefit of a genuine legal defense, and then sentences him to life in prison-- destroying his life and his family’s.

“China’s imposition of such an abusive sentence shames not only China but those nations that do business as usual with China and labor under the false hope that China’s economic integration into the family of nations will inevitably lead it to democracy’s door. The Chinese democracy movement will never rest until Dr. Wang is freed and democracy and a decent respect for human rights rises in China,” declared Timothy Cooper, international director of the Free China Movement and ambassador-at-large for the China Democracy Party.

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