2014-12-16
Tang Jingling, a top human rights lawyer in Guangzhou, and his wife Wang Yanfang in an undated photo.
(Photo courtesy of Wang Yanfang.)
Authorities in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou have dispatched dozens of police officers to a hillside cemetery outside the city to prevent a planned commemoration of the death of a Mao-era dissident, activists said.
Dozens of uniformed police lined the woodland pathways leading up Lingyan mountain near Suzhou’s Mudu township, preventing activists from marking Tuesday’s 82nd anniversary of Lin Zhao’s execution for alleged counterrevolutionary crimes under the rule of late supreme leader Mao Zedong.
“For the past few days, a lot of people from out of town have been coming to visit the tomb,” a would-be participant surnamed Qian told RFA, citing local business owners.
“I spoke to a gentleman called Zhang Peixiang who saw police severely beating up some of these people,” he said.
Pan Lu, who teaches high school in Suzhou, said she had been prevented from visiting Lin Zhao’s grave on Tuesday.
“We didn’t go to Lingyan mountain because there were a lot of police officers and police vehicles at the foot of the mountain,” Pan told RFA.
“I would guess that no one has managed to get up to the grave today,” Pan said. “If they did, I haven’t heard about it.”
“We are now under tight police surveillance near Lingyan mountain…There are a lot of folk from out of town here with us…sort of milling around but they can’t go up there,” she said.
Pan said she estimated that around 50 police and armed police had been bussed in to seal off the area around Lin’s grave.
And a local resident said a planned memorial event had been called off.
“They are keeping a particularly close watch on it this year, and they had to cancel the event,” the resident said. “I heard the police have been patrolling the place all night.”
“The place is still locked down,” the resident said.
Born a writer
Lin Zhao is the pen name of Peng Lingzhao, a writer who grew up near Nanjing, in the eastern province of Jiangsu.
