Wei Jingsheng
Wei Jingsheng (Chinese魏京生, Pinyin Wei Jingsheng; born May 20, 1950 in Beijing ) is one of the most important political dissidents of the People's Republic of China. During the Beijing Spring he made his demands for democracy at the Wall of Democracy known and therefore was imprisoned for 15 years in prisons and labor camps. Since 1997 he has lived in the U.S., where he continued engagement with the democratization of China.
Life
Wei Jingsheng was born in 1950 in Beijing. Weis parents were loyal members of the Communist Party. Weis father held a high post in the State Department and had relations with the top management of state and party. Weis mother was party cadres in an industrial company. The family lived in a complex where only lived party cadres. Wei Jingsheng, the oldest of four children, attended elite schools and was taken to a devoted Maoists.
While Weis childhood, the People's Republic of China was built to a state on the Soviet model. Land and production were collectivized, fights enemies of the state and pursued in the framework of the campaign against the rights of intellectuals, scientists and artists. Trying Mao Zedong, 1958 to catch the development gap to the industrialized world, with the Great Leap Forward, ended in complete disaster and famine massive scale.
When Mao Zedong in 1966, the Cultural Revolution triggered, Wei Jingsheng was just 16 years old. Wei was one of the many enthusiastic members of the Red Guards. He left Beijing, toured China's north and northwest and learned about the life of rural residents under Communist rule know. After his return, Wei joined the United Action Committee, a group of Red Guards, who opposed supported by Jiang Qing fractions. The prohibition of this United Action Committee led to the temporary arrest Weis in 1967. Weis mother was abused during the Cultural Revolution as a class enemy. When she became ill with cancer, her treatment was denied.
As in 1968, the People's Liberation army was deployed to curb violence by the Red Guards, Wei Jingsheng fled to relatives in Anhui. There he heard of the great famine during the "Great Leap Forward ". 1970 Wei was himself a member of the People's Liberation Army, to evade all about the deportation to the country. After two years of Wei left the army and worked as an electrician at the Beijing Zoo.
After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the arrest of the Gang of Four was kindled a power struggle between the radical wing of the Communist Party and a liberal wing by Deng Xiaoping. This phase was characterized by a relative political openness. In Beijing, a pro-democracy movement, the center of the Democracy Wall was created. The first contribution to democracy Weis wall appeared a few weeks after the beginning of this movement in the early morning hours of the 5th December 1978. The article, in addition to Deng's four modernizations, a fifth modernization, namely democracy demanded, but particularly aroused great attention. Wei argued that the people legally entitled to democracy and that anyone who denies the people democracy, a shameless bandit is no better than a capitalist who brings the workers about the earned with sweat and blood money.
In this period of relative openness Wei was possible to ask the officials of the secret police to the whereabouts of arrested colleagues or to meet with foreign journalists. From January 1979 Wei issued a magazine called exploration along with several other activists. In this journal he published articles in which he complained of the illegality of arrests of political activists or demanded the release of all political prisoners.
On March 19, 1979 were new rules for publication of opinions in force, which had been personally ordered by Deng Xiaoping after his visit to Jimmy Carter. There were only allowed writings are published, the subordinated themselves to the four basic principles of Dengschen policy. Wei asked it in an article, whether democracy Deng wanted to or not, and answered that question in the negative. Wei argued that Deng a dictator like Mao Zedong would be no democracy.
On March 29, Wei was arrested along with other political activists. He was accused of betraying military secrets about the invasion of the People's Liberation Army in Vietnam to foreigners and to have dealt with counter-revolutionary propaganda. Wei, who in his trial had no defense, was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment and hard labor. He was allowed from this time his family no longer contact and his guards were not allowed to talk to him. Protests within China, but also from abroad, had no effect, such as Andrei Sakharov's personal letter to Prime Minister Hua Guofeng.
Despite international protests Wei Jingsheng remained in solitary confinement, first in the detention center Banbuqiao, later in the Beijing Prison No. 1 Until 1984, he was allowed his cell in which there was no fresh air and no sunlight, do not leave. He was urged to confess his crimes. As punishment for his refusal he was not allowed to possess and write letters to his relatives a pencil. Weis health deteriorated to the point that he lost his teeth and got heart problems. In 1984 he was transferred to a labor camp in Qinghai Province. His prison conditions here were somewhat relieved, the contact with other prisoners, he was allowed.
In 1989, the dissident Fang Lizhi demanded in one of 110 other prominent intellectuals signed letter for the release of Wei Jingsheng. After the suppression of the protests in Tiananmen Square Wei Jingsheng was transferred to a labor camp in Nanpu in northern China, where his prison conditions deteriorated again. With hunger strike, but he forced a slight improvement, about access to books and media. He repeatedly sent letters to members of the party and state leaders, in which he asked for a revision of the judgment. In other letters, he condemned the policy of the Communist Party, about 1991, when he equated the human rights policy of the People 's Republic of China with that of the Third Reich, or in 1992, when he attacked sharply in a letter to Deng Xiaoping's Tibet policy of the Communist Party.
In 1993, Beijing competed to host the Olympic Games 2000., In a " gesture of goodwill " Wei Jingsheng was released about half a year before the expiration of his 15-year prison sentence.
Despite warnings from the authorities Wei Jingsheng took his commitment to the democratization of China once again by having met with other activists and representatives of the Western media. On April 1, 1994, he was arrested again and therefore to 14 years in prison for trying to overthrow the government, was sentenced on 21 November 1995. Again followed worldwide protests, but also honors for Wei. So the 1994 Olof Palme Prize and the 1996 Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament it is awarded.
On November 16, 1997 Wei Jingsheng is released after Jiang Zemin and Bill Clinton had agreed in historic talks on the release of political dissidents. Wei, such as even the dissident Wang Dan is, however, immediately deported to the United States.
In the U.S., Wei continued to use for a democratization of China. He founded the Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition ( OCDC ), which is an umbrella organization for Chinese democracy movements around the world, as well as the Wei Jingsheng Foundation. In 1998 he was awarded, together with Wang Dan with the Human Rights Award of the U.S. Congress of Democracy Foundation.