{"id":44111,"date":"2014-12-11T16:32:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T16:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=44111 "},"modified":"2014-12-11T16:32:00","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T16:32:00","slug":"44111-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=44111","title":{"rendered":"Dissident\\’s Daughters Granted Political Asylum in United States"},"content":{"rendered":"
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2014-12-11<\/div>
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Zhang Anni (L) and Zhang Ruli (R) in San Francisco, Sept. 7, 2013.<\/div>
 Photo courtesy of Reggie Littlejohn<\/div>
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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.<\/div>
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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.<\/div>
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They were taken in by Reggie Littlejohn, founder of the Women Without Frontiers rights group, where they are now permitted to remain indefinitely.<\/div>
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“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.<\/div>
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“[My husband] and I enjoy being the American parents of Anni and Ruli, and we are very proud of them,” she said.<\/div>
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Children targeted<\/div>
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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.<\/div>
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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.<\/div>
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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.<\/div>
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“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.”<\/div>
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“It is a travesty that he is in jail simply for standing up for his daughter’s right to go to school,” Littlejohn said.’<\/div>
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‘A mafia society’<\/div>
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Beijing-based activist Hu Jia welcomed the news.<\/div>
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Continue reading the original article<\/a>.<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<div>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.<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}