Chinese state guest is a symbol of censure and oppression

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) and the Hamburg Regional Group of the Tibet Initiative Deutschland (TID), described the Chinese Deputy Prime Minister, Zhang Dejiang, who in the framework of CHINA TIME 2008 is coming to visit the Hanse town on Wednesday, as a symbol of state censure and oppression. He stands not for the ardently desired opening of the country and democratic change through trade, but for the „old China” of repression and arbitrary action. Zhang Dejiang in his time as Party Secretary of the province of Guangdong (2002-2007) was responsible for so many breaches of human rights that he is quite unsuitable to celebrate the 22 years of twinning between Hamburg and Shanghai. In the light of Zhang Dejiang’s share of the responsibility for the mass arrests of Falun Gong practitioners and for the crushing of the farmers’ revolt one can only be amazed and shocked at the joy expressed by Hamburg’s Mayor, Ole von Beust, in welcoming the Chinese state visitor, said the GfbV and the TID.

In the province of Guangdong the meditation movement Falun Gong was the subject of particularly harsh persecution during Zhang Dejiang’s term of office as Party Secretary. At least 33 Falun Gong practitioners died between 2002 and 2005 as a result of torture in the province. In the autumn of 2005 there were mass arrests of Falun Gong practitioners in Guangdong. Many of those arrested were sentenced to long terms in prison or sent to work camps. There was even a formal charge laid against Zhang Dejiang in November 2005 by an Australian court for his share of responsibility in the torture of political prisoners. Inglorious also were his futile attempts to cover up the SARS epidemic which broke out in the province of Guangdong in November 2002. In no other Chinese province were more SARS cases registered by the World Health Organisation (WHO). But for weeks the authorities of the province attempted to keep information on the epidemic secret, with the result that the contagion continued to spread. In the case of other disasters in the province, such as the explosions in coal-mines in the year 2005, he prevented the publication of reports and deliberately suppressed the flow of information.