Tonight my son and I attended the Visual Artists Guild Annual Tiananmen Square Commemoration and Award Dinner.
Those advocates of democracy and human rights that were honored tonight (in absentia) included:
Wu Lihong , environmental activists who served three years for speaking out against the pollution of Lake Tai.
Dhondup Wangchen, serving six year in prison for making a documentary film that discusses Tibetan attitudes to China’s 2008 Olympic spectacle. His wife explained that he has contracted hepatitis in prison and she has been told that he is losing his vision. She begged the U.S. government to stand up and demand his release so he can rejoin his family. Below you see her crying next to his photo after accepting the award on his behalf. It was heart breaking. Please sign the petition to free him.
The good folks at Amnesty International are supporting the Wangchen family in the U.S. James Zimmerman, from that group, offered a summary of their annual China report; which invariably includes the statement that China continues, year after year, to execute more people than the entire rest of the world combined.
Zhu Yufu, doing an additional seven years in prison for “inciting subversion” by writing a poem entitled “It’s Time.” How ironically appropriate.
Hat’s off to event organizer Ann Lau, one of the most energetic and dedicated fighter for freedom that I have ever met.
Next month will see President Obama greeting Xi Jinping, the dictator behind this system at Annenberg estate near Palm Springs, California. We can expect him to make some extremely vague comment about human rights in a way that doesn’t “offend” his fascist guest and then he will move on to encouraging closer economic ties to China’s despotic regime. If you can, please come to Palm Springs June 7 & 8 to protest this meeting between the President of the United States and a common thug.
Greg Autry serves as Senior Economist with the American Jobs Alliance, Economist with theCoalition for a Prosperous America and is co-author (with Peter Navarro) of Death by China: Confronting the Dragon – a Global Call to Action. He blogs regularly at: http://www.gregautry.us/blog and on the Huffington Post.