Rights activist urges China to grant Olympic pardon
BEIJING—With China's image battered by the turmoil over Tibet and the torch relay, a human rights activist is urging Chinese leaders to pardon long-jailed prisoners in a gesture that could help dispel the rancor surrounding the Beijing Olympics.
The pardon, requested in a letter by American activist John Kamm to a senior Chinese leader, could potentially see the release of scores -- and perhaps several hundred -- people jailed for political acts, including taking part in the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement and anti-government protests in Tibet in the late 1980s.
"China has an historic opportunity to be the first Olympics host to" issue such a pardon, "thereby leaving an important humanitarian legacy for future hosts," Kamm wrote to the head of China's Communist Party-controlled legislature. Sections of the letter, dated April 24, were publicly released Thursday on the Web site of his San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation.
Once a successful American businessman in Hong Kong, Kamm turned to human rights lobbying on China in the early 1990s and has since become one of the most effective campaigners, working with officials in the Ministry of Justice and other agencies to gain the release of political prisoners.
His latest appeal comes as Beijing looks for ways to recover the cachet it hoped to enjoy in the run-up to the August games, but which evaporated after a sometimes violent uprising among Tibetans against Chinese rule in March, followed by a police clampdown and a torch relay disrupted by protesters.
The events have battered China's standing overseas. Online surveys last month in the U.S. by Zogby International and in Europe by
If China were to issue a prisoner amnesty "It's because they understand how badly their image has been hurt," Kamm said in an interview. "Bold moves would be in order."
Kamm's letter does not mention specific prisoners or political crimes. Instead, his request seeks clemency for a broader group -- "long-serving prisoners who no longer pose a threat to society and are nearing the end of their sentences."
Such a broad pardon could lead to freedom for some better-known political prisoners. It would cover almost all those convicted of "counter-revolution" -- a charge once leveled against political dissidents for opposing the communist government. The crime was removed from the legal code a decade ago. Kamm estimates that more than 150 "counter-revolutionaries" remain in jail, and terms of many are due to expire in coming years.
Among those could be Hu Shigen, jailed in 1992 and sentenced to 20 years for trying to organize a political party, among other acts. Another long-held prisoner is Lobsang Tenzin, a Tibet University student who took part in protests in Lhasa in 1988 and was sentenced to death for the killing of a police officer. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and later reduced. He is scheduled for release in 2013.
Kamm said China has been an avid supporter of the truce resolutions introduced in the United Nations for every Olympics since the 1990s. He has raised an Olympic pardon with local Chinese officials in recent discussions, and, he said, "the feedback has been positive so far."
In his research, Kamm said he found no other host countries have used the Olympics for wide-ranging prisoner releases. Releasing large groups of prisoners was done five times under China's communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong into the mid-1970s, Kamm said, but never since.
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On the Net: http://www.duihua.org/index.htm
