Tiananmen dissident family presses for his release

Family and lawyers of an exiled leader in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests pressed for his release Monday, nearly a year after he was sent to a mainland Chinese jail while trying to return to his homeland.

Zhou Yongjun, a permanent U.S. resident on track to become a naturalized citizen, was trying to enter Hong Kong in September last year when he was stopped by local officials and handed over to mainland Chinese authorities.

He is being held in a detention facility in his home province of Sichuan in western China, where one of his attorneys said he has been tortured and denied family visits.

"I am here with our little girl to look for daddy," said Zhang Yuewei, Zhou's girlfriend and the mother of his young daughter. "It's Hong Kong's government who sent him to mainland China."

Zhou, now 42, was among the most prominent figures in the 1989 student-led demonstrations in Beijing that were violently suppressed. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people are believed to have been killed when troops stormed into central Beijing June 3-4, 1989, on orders to break up the protests.

But China has never acknowledged its crackdown, discussion of which is still taboo, and restrictions on those who took part in the protests remain harsh.

In April 1989, Zhou captured global attention by kneeling on the steps of the Great Hall of the People along one side of Tiananmen Square in a plea for China's communist leaders to acknowledge student calls for political reforms and an end to corruption.

On Monday, Zhou's girlfriend carried a portrait of him as she marched with other supporters to Hong Kong's government headquarters. They called on Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang to explain why Zhou was turned over to Chinese officials, a possible violation of the territory's laws, and asked for help securing his release.

"Zhou was sent to China without legal basis," said Jim Li, one of Zhou's attorneys. "Hong Kong is responsible."

Hong Kong, a former British colony, was returned to China in 1997, but the territory retains separate political, legal, economic and immigration systems from the mainland. It also lacks a deportation and removal treaty with mainland China.

"They are totally disregarding the obligations under the law," Albert Ho, a Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker who is helping with Zhou's case, said of Hong Kong authorities. "It seems the government is acting on the direction from China. It's a warning bell for our way of one country and two systems."

Hong Kong's government refused to comment.

Zhou was imprisoned for two years after Chinese leaders crushed the pro-democracy movement. He then left China for New York.

He was planning to enter China from Hong Kong on his latest visit, in hopes of seeing his elderly parents, his supporters said. He tried to visit China once before, in December 1998, but was arrested in Shenzhen and spent more than two years in a labor camp. He returned to the United States in 2002.