Bush asked to seek release of US scholar from Chinese detention

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A group of US lawmakers has written to President George W. Bush asking him to press Chinese leader Hu Jintao for the release of a US permanent resident and scholar languishing in a Beijing prison for more than three years.

A veteran of the Tiananmen Square student demonstration in 1989, dissident Yang Jianli was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of espionage and illegal entry following his April 26, 2002 arrest.

The Chinese authorities have refused to budge despite 66 applications by legislators and other prominent figures seeking the release of the research fellow at Harvard University, according to Yang's American family lawyer Jared Genser.

"We are now at the point where we believe that absent a direct request from you to President Hu, we will not be successful in bringing Dr Yang home to his family in the United States," the US lawmakers told Bush in their letter dated Tuesday, a copy of which was shown to AFP.

Yang was arrested for having entered China while using a friend's passport, since his own had been denied renewal by the Chinese government because of his involvement in the Tiananmen protests, his US-based wife Christina said.

Yang, who had gone to view labor unrest in the northeastern part of China before he was detained, "put himself in jeopardy by going to China to try to bring to his fellow Chinese the kind of rights he had come fully to understand and enjoy here in the US," the US legislators said in the letter.

"We very much hope President Bush will heed the calls of members of Congress and will match the rhetoric that he had strongly stated with practical action when he meets with President Hu," Genser said.

Bush, currently on a visit to Japan ahead of attending the APEC summit in Seoul, had said he would voice US concerns over China's lack of political, economic and social reforms when he visits Beijing on November 19.

Genser said Yang's ailing father suffered a stroke and became paralyzed a day ago and that he was virtually on his death bed.

The United Nations has said that Yang's imprisonment is in violation of international law.

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Source: "AFP".