China frees Tiananmen Square protester
China has freed a teacher and reduced the prison term of an accomplice jailed for splattering paint on Mao Tse-tung's portrait in Tiananmen Square.
By defacing the mammoth pictutre, Yu Zhijian and Yu Dongyue symbolized popular anger at China's old guard during the 1989 protests.
Their harsh sentencing two months into the crackdown - teacher Yu Zhijian got life and Yu Dongyue got 20 years - was seen as a warning.
Word of Yu Zhijian's release on September 13 and a two-year reduction in Yu Dongyue's sentence was conveyed in a fax from China's Justice Ministry to John Kamm, head of the San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation.
The fax also provided information on three other political prisoners, among them Zhao Fengping, a government archivist jailed 20 years ago for helping paste up democracy tracts. Sentenced to life in prison, Zhao had his term reduced and was finally released in April, at the age of 61, Mr Kamm says.
Mr Kamm queried the Justice Ministry officials about the five, along with five other political prisoners only ten days earlier. The response was the fastest in his eight years of on-off dialogue with the Chinese authorities and came just before Mr Kamm planned to meet State Department human rights officials.
He said: "I told them I was going to Washington and would like to be able to show people that the cooperation is ongoing".
A former China-based businessman, Mr Kamm has been hailed in Washington for his effective lobbying of China to release prisoners. His Dui Hua Foundation has combed local government gazettes and media reports for information on political prisoners previously unknown abroad.
China's latest exchange with Mr Kamm also comes as the government campaigns to win the 2008 Olympics. Key to that bid is rehabilitating the image of Tiananmen Square, tarnished in the minds of many overseas by the army offensive that killed hundreds in quelling the 1989 protests.
To that end, Chinese sports officials have offered to hold the beach volleyball and triathlon competitions at the square. Already one International Olympic Committee member, German rower Roland Baar, has questioned the propriety of the venue and China's political fitness as a host.
