A sense of direction
Once jailed in China, he's walking 500 miles to draw attention to rights abuses there
Jianli Yang has a PhD in math from Berkeley and a second doctorate in political economy and government from Harvard. He's got a wife and two children and is an active member of his Brookline church. Highly successful, he has started two foundations to help Chinese activists. So why in the world would he risk entering his native China on a fake passport?
He nearly got away with it. He flew home in April 2002 and spent two weeks meeting quietly with leaders of the fledgling labor movement. On his way back to Boston, he was detained at the airport. He spent the next five years in prison, a year of it in solitary confinement, on charges of illegal crossing and espionage.
Tomorrow he sets off on another improbable journey, walking 500 miles to Washington - alone - to bring attention to human rights abuses in his homeland.
This journey really started years ago, when Yang participated in the Tiananmen Square protests, and continued after his arrest and imprisonment in 2002. He had entered his country on a friend's passport. "My Chinese passport had expired, and I'd been denied twice for application," he says on a recent day in a small suite of offices downtown that serve as headquarters of his foundation, Initiatives for China.
Yang felt he had "every right to go back to my home." But he didn't have permission. After his participation in the student-led Tiananmen uprising in 1989, Yang fled the country and his passport was confiscated; he was blacklisted from entering China for 30 years.
A student at the University of California at Berkeley at the time, he had flown home to stand shoulder to shoulder with other students protesting Chinese authoritarianism. As police shot into the crowd, Yang saw bodies fall around him, and witnessed a tank running over several students, killing them. He keeps a grainy black-and-white photo of a tank severing the legs of one student, a friend, who became a prominent wheelchair athlete.
Yang redoubled his activism when he returned to the United States, setting up the Foundation for China in the 21st Century, which has laid out plans for a constitutional democracy in China. To the group who drew them up, the plans look good on paper, but who will effect such a profound change from a one-party dictatorship? "Everyone is puzzled," concedes Yang, 45. "Who will take the risk? Who will pay the price? There are so many dissidents in China, but their problem is they're scattered. They can't organize them selves together to have a concerted effort."
In a show of solidarity with such activists, Yang will set off on his monthlong walk to Washington, arriving there June 4, the 19th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings. He'll leave from City Hall Plaza at 2:30 p.m. and will stop in Providence, New Haven, Bridgeport, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and several smaller towns before reaching the Lincoln Memorial to join a pro-democracy rally.
He's got his map, and along the way, he'll stay with friends of friends; the call for shelter went out from parishioners at All Saints Parish in Brookline, where Yang and his family are members. "I have a good sense of direction," Yang says, smiling.
His goal is to call attention to human rights abuses in China in the weeks leading up to the Beijing Olympics. Yang believes that boycotting the opening ceremonies is a good idea, to put pressure on the Chinese government to adopt at least minimal human rights. He's also walking, he says, to demonstrate his freedom here - and his gratitude - compared to his imprisonment in his homeland.
"I'm free only because of the determined efforts of so many people," he says, "from my neighbors in Brookline to the national leaders in Washington, D.C., from my children's elementary schools to Harvard University, from lawyers to journalists, from my Christian brothers and sisters in Massachusetts to American diplomats in Beijing."
He says he's also walking for others who can't: those in China who have been abducted, imprisoned, or placed under house arrest for political reasons. He's walking for the Tibetan monks, and for those still jailed for participating in Tiananmen Square. As he puts it: "I am walking with a heart full of gratitude for America, my adopted country, and a soul full of hope for a better future for China, my homeland."
'He's very determined'
In 2002 Yang was detained without a trial for 15 months and was not allowed outside for eight months. For three months his family in Brookline did not know where he was. Nearly a year would pass before the Chinese government officially admitted detaining him.
When he left solitary confinement, Yang shared a cell with common criminals - inmates sent by the authorities to watch and harass him. "Some were worse than others," he says. "They did not let you sleep, and there was a lot of verbal abuse." But others were sympathetic, and Yang secretly taught them English, math, and Bible studies.
Yang's son was 6, his daughter 9 when he left Brookline on a two-week trip. It would be 2 1/2 years before he was allowed to write them and three years before he saw them. In 2005 his family was allowed to visit. They had to sit across a table from him, not touching, and weren't allowed to speak English; his children did not speak much Chinese. They were given only 45 minutes together.
On a visit the following year, they were allowed to hug and to speak English. "But my son was too scared to speak," Yang says.
Back in Brookline, Yang's wife, Christina Fu, was busy those five years supporting the family while also supporting her husband's cause. She lobbied daily for his release, writing letters, making phone calls and visits. "He told me he'd be back in two weeks," says Yu, a researcher at Harvard Medical School. "I support his work because it's the right thing to do. I can't say no. He's very determined."
Still, she concedes, the five years he was away were also difficult for the family. "I prayed every night with my two children. We asked God to protect Dad and his health. We asked God for our own strength and courage to overcome fear and live a normal life when [he] was absent. We always kept hope alive. We often talked about what it would be like on the day when Dad comes home and used our imagination to picture this day."
His release came, Yang is convinced, only through the bipartisan efforts of President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and other Republicans, and Democratic congressmen Barney Frank and Michael Capuano from Yang's adopted state of Massachusetts. Though he served his entire five-year sentence, Yang believes it would have been much longer if not for political intervention.
"They could have sentenced me to a life term," he says. "Others got 10, 15 years or life in prison. All the pressure helped a lot."
Though he has lived in the United States since he first arrived as a student in 1986 - and though his wife and children are American citizens - Yang has refused to become one. To him, it's a statement.
"I chose not to be naturalized to retain my credibility when I do human rights activism," he says. "Otherwise, the Chinese government will belittle me as an outsider interfering in their affairs."
He also refused an offer to be released from prison eight months early because the authorities would not give him a passport or let him stay in the country for a while. "I asked to go back to my hometown to visit my father's grave. He died while I was in prison," says Yang. His mother and some of his siblings also remain in China.
When his full sentence was up, Yang stayed in the country for four more months, visiting family and meeting with peasants and other laborers, refusing to leave until he was given a Chinese passport. Last August officials finally gave him one and deported him.
Can he go back? Will he?
He says he doesn't know. But then he adds: "It's very likely I will try. Of course, my wife doesn't like the idea."
As for his wife, she says she's totally supportive of his plans - after the kids, who are now 15 and 12, go off to college.
