Watch kept on leading dissidents

Pamela Pun

M

AINLAND authorities have kept a watchful eye on the dissident

community, forcing them to cancel commemorative activities while

police detained seven more activists.

The seven were detained yesterday and on Thursday night, following a

nationwide crackdown on dissidents in the past month. The Information

Centre of Human Rights & Democratic Movement in China said that up

until yesterday police had detained at least 130 people nationwide.

Of those, 42 were still in police custody.

A Christian was taken away in Beijing yesterday morning when he was

about to go to church to pray for victims killed in the crackdown, the

centre said.

One dissident in the northern province of Shanxi, three in the

northeastern province of Liaoning and two in Jilin in the same region

were taken away on Thursday night.

Twenty-seven former student leaders, including Wang Dan and Wu'er

Kaixi, issued a statement condemning the atrocities committed by

Beijing in the Tiananmen crackdown, the centre said.

Under mounting pressure from the authorities, dissidents were forced

to cancel their public memorial gathering and mourn the victims of the

June 4 massacre in private, said spokesmen.

In the northwest province of Shanxi, 90 dissidents had planned to hold

a candlelight vigil on the night of 3 June. But the move was foiled by

local police in advance.

"We had planned to apply to the police authorities to hold a

candlelight vigil on the night of 3 June, but they not only rejected

the application but also put key people under house arrest or sent

them to remote counties," dissident Lin Mu told the Hong Kong

Standard yesterday.

One of the organisers, Ma Xiaoming, has been sent to a remote county

in the northwest Shanxi province and his whereabouts were as yet

unknown, said Mr Lin.

Mr Lin, former secretary of the ousted party chief Hu Yaobang, became

a dissident after the June 4 crackdown.

"I tried to call the victims' families in Beijing to express my

condolences yesterday, but found all their telephones were

disconnected," he said.

What he could do was wear black clothes and stay up late on the

anniversary day to mourn the victims of the crackdown.

In the eastern city of Hanzhou, the wife of opposition party founder

Wang Youcai said she would stay at home after being barred from

attending a public gathering mourning the victims of the massacre in a

park on Thursday.

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