2014-11-07
Student leaders of the Occupy protests present a letter to former chief executive Tung Chee-Hwa outside the gates of his private residence in Hong Kong, Nov. 7, 2014.
RFA
As world leaders gear up to travel to Beijing for an economic summit on Monday, rights activists and democracy activists hit out at the ruling Chinese Communist Party for its continued detention of dozens of people who publicly supported the Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong.
Chinese authorities are holding “scores” of people around the country for publicly supporting Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Movement,” which has been encamped on three major highways and intersections in the city in a campaign for universal suffrage in 2017 elections, Amnesty International said.
In a statement on its website, the London-based rights group called on world leaders to put pressure on China to release the Occupy supporters, who number “at least 76,” it said.
“APEC leaders must end their recent silence on the crackdown against mainland Chinese activists expressing support for Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters,” the group’s East Asia research director Roseann Rife said in a statement on the group’s website on Friday.
“Political convenience should not trump principled action,” Rife said.
“The leaders should … urge President Xi to ensure all those detained solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are immediately and unconditionally released,” she said.
Amnesty said it had been able to confirm the continued detentions of 76 people, mostly in Beijing, the eastern province of Jiangsu, and the southern cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, which border Hong Kong.
Rights lawyers previously told RFA “more than 100” people had been detained, often for posting photos online of themselves holding a banner, or with a shaved head, in support of the Occupy Central protests that have gripped Hong Kong for nearly six weeks.
Others have been detained for traveling to Hong Kong, giving interviews to the media, or held after the authorities found out they were planning such a trip, activists say.
China’s tightly controlled state media has dubbed the Occupy movement an “illegal protest,” while pro-Beijing politicians said on Friday the movement could “harm the city’s security,” although they didn’t elaborate.
The government’s army of Internet censors have deleted photos and blocked any positive comment on the protests on China’s social media platforms, as well as blocking the BBC website and Instagram since protests began.
‘Rule of law’
The detentions came as the ruling party issued a communique following its Fourth Plenum last month, announcing it would implement the “rule of law” in a bid to improve its record.
But Rife said the authorities don’t appear to have changed their approach to human rights.
“[The crackdown] makes a mockery of Xi’s recent claims that the rule of law and human rights will be fully respected in China by 2020,” Rife said.
