Free Wang BingZhang

VSSDM Organized Rally:

Date: December 28 (Saturday)

Time: 3:00 pm

Venue: Vancouver Chinese Consulate (3380 Granville St,. Vancouver)

Dr. Wang Bingzhang is the premier figure in the Chinese diaspora’s democracy movement, who was abducted in Vietnam and send to China, sentenced the following year to life in prison as well as solitary confinement, and has now been incarcerated for over 22 years. This December 30th will be Wang Bingzhang’s 77th birthday. In order to pressure the Chinese government to unconditionally release Wang Bingzhang without further delay, the VSSDM joins in the proposal of the concerned group of “freedom for Wang Bingzhang”, and will invite everyone to join us outside Vancouver Chinese consulate on the 28th of December at 3:00 p.m., for a joint protest.

One of the first to be sent by the government to study overseas in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, Wang Bingzhang studied at Canada’s McGill University in 1979, receiving a PhD in pathology in 1982; upon returning to China he abandoned his career in medicine, and immersed himself in democracy work, establishing the periodical China Spring. The year 1983 saw the forming of the Alliance for Democratic China, and Wang assumed the role of the first chairman. Under Wang’s leadership, the overseas movement for Chinese democracy came into being, and became a stronger and more prominent voice; as well, it also promulgated political change within China as well as a voice of dissent. In 2002, while Wang and his companions were in Vietnam, and were just about to surreptitiously re-enter China to continue the democracy movement, he was kidnapped and sent back to China, underwent a closed-door trial, was charged with espionage and leading a terrorist organization, and sentenced to life imprisonment. According to reports from Taiwan and Thailand, these were trumped-up charges against Wang.

Since his incarceration, Wang Bingzhang has been denied visits from his family, and the location of his imprisonment was also kept hidden from the public. It was only ten years ago that the outside world learned of his incarceration in Guangdong province’s Shaokwan, and later transferred to the Bei River prison. While in prison, Wang was the subject of inhumane treatment, and has been kept in solitary confinement. His health has been steadily deteriorating, and recently suffered a major stroke, as well as a few minor strokes, as well as severe allergies; in the winter months he endured the agony of frostbite and bedsores.

Under the repressive Chinese regime, Wang Bingzhang’s case is only one of many. In Hong Kong, Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai, who is, like Wang, 77 years old, is another such case. Just as Jimmy Lai, prisoners of conscience incarcerated by the Hong Kong authorities have reached over a thousand. In the eve of Christmas and the dawning of a new year, let us all offer Wang Bingzhang season’s greetings, and a prayer that he would soon be freed from China’s gulag.