2014-12-11
Zhang Anni (L) and Zhang Ruli (R) in San Francisco, Sept. 7, 2013.
Photo courtesy of Reggie Littlejohn
The daughters of a veteran Chinese dissident jailed in September after he protested his youngest child’s ban from schools in the eastern province of Anhui have been granted political asylum in the United States, a U.S.-based rights group said on Thursday.
Zhang Anni and her elder sister Ruli left China for California following their father’s arrest in August 2013 following a dispute with the authorities after police pulled Anni out of primary school earlier in the year and detained her for several hours.
They were taken in by Reggie Littlejohn, founder of the Women Without Frontiers rights group, where they are now permitted to remain indefinitely.
“We are absolutely thrilled that Anni and Ruli have been granted asylum and can remain indefinitely in the United States,” Littlejohn said in a statement on the group’s website.
“[My husband] and I enjoy being the American parents of Anni and Ruli, and we are very proud of them,” she said.
Children targeted
Anni was dubbed “China’s youngest prisoner of conscience” after she was taken out of school and detained for several hours in February 2013; denied food, water, and a blanket; and later prevented from attending school and held under house arrest, Zhang and other activists told RFA at the time.
Zhang pleaded not guilty to charges of “gathering a crowd to disrupt public order” at his trial in Anhui’s Bengbu city in December 2013, telling the court his actions had been “reasonable and lawful” at all times and were a response to the illegal actions of the authorities.
According to Littlejohn, the sisters are not the first children of veteran dissidents from China’s 1989 pro-democracy movement to be targeted by the authorities and the family has suffered economic hardship as a result of Zhang’s long-term unemployment linked to his dissident past.
“It is a great honor to be able to help a hero like Zhang Lin by caring for his daughters,” she said. “He has given up everything for freedom and democracy in China, and is now on his fourth jail sentence.”
“It is a travesty that he is in jail simply for standing up for his daughter’s right to go to school,” Littlejohn said.’
‘A mafia society’
Beijing-based activist Hu Jia welcomed the news.
