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AAAS Human Rights Action Network

Letter of Appeal from the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility

September 11, 1998

Xiao Yang Buzhang
Sifabu
Xiaguangli
Beijingshi 1100016
People's Republic of China

Your Excellency:

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the largest organization of natural and social scientists in the United States, and the world's largest federation of scientific organizations, with 143,000 individual members and 275 affiliated groups. Our AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility was formed in 1976 to protect the human rights of scientists and to deal with issues relating to scientific freedom worldwide.

On behalf of the Committee, we are writing to express our deep concern regarding the arrests of Lin Hai, a software engineer, and Wang Youcai, a physicist. According to information received by the Committee, both men were arrested in July 1998 solely for exercising their internationally recognized right to the peaceful expression of their opinions.

The Committee has learned that Lin Hai was arrested in July 1998 for providing 30,000 Chinese e-mail addresses to U.S.-based Internet publications that promote democracy. He was reportedly accused of "inciting to overthrow state power."

According to our sources, Chinese physicist and dissident Wang Youcai was arrested on July 22, 1998, along with Zhang Shanguang, a labor rights activist, for trying to organize an opposition party. We were also informed that Wang's arrest was followed by that of seven others on August 12, 1998. The seven were part of a group of forty dissidents who requested permission to hold a demonstration in Changsha, in southern China, to protest Wang's arrest.

The arrests of Lin Hai and Wang Youcai, Zhang Shanguang, and the seven others, constitutes serious violations of international human rights standards enumerated in the Universal Declaration for Human Rights, which was adopted without opposition by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948. They include the right to life, liberty, and security of person; freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention or exile; freedom of opinion and expression; and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. The Committee is also concerned by the apparent attempt by your government to restrict freedom of information on the Internet.

The Committee calls on you to release Lin Hai, Wang Youcai, Zhang Shanguang, and the seven others immediately and unconditionally on the grounds that they were arrested solely for exercising their internationally recognized rights to freedom of opinion and expression. We urge you also to release the others who were arrested solely for complying with Chinese regulations requiring official permission to hold a demonstration.

Sincerely,



Irving Lerch, Chair Mary Gray, Chair
Committee on Scientific Committee on Scientific
Freedom and Responsibility Freedom and Responsibility

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