Sir, - Before the members of Dublin City Council support the proposal to twin Dublin with the Chinese capital, Beijing (The Irish Times, March 30th), they should consider the following:
Zhou Jianxiong, an agricultural worker from Chunhua township in Hunan province, died on May 15th, 1998. The authorities suspected his wife of being pregnant without permission, hung him upside down and subjected him to a horrifying ordeal of torture to make him reveal her whereabouts.
They might also consider Li Mei, a young woman who was tortured severely in Hefei Women's Labour Camp until eventually she had to be taken to a military hospital, where she died on February 1st, 2001. Li Mei was the 140th Falun Gong practitioner to die as a result of the government's crackdown on the spiritual practice. The Dublin authorities might also think about the Trinity College postgraduate student Zhao Ming, currently detained without trial and tortured in Tuanhe Labour Camp in a suburb of Beijing. Would Mr Maurice Ahern request to visit Zhao Ming during his visit there?
There are many other things to consider - among them the many hundreds of people who are executed in China every year, the pro-democracy activists who were savagely crushed in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, the Christian and other religious groups who are persecuted because they do not follow the "official" religions of the state. Then there is Tibet, whose people have suffered appallingly under Chinese rule for many decades.
But perhaps the councillors of our capital will be too busy jumping at the chance to help Beijing with its public relations exercises as it attempts to win the right to host the 2008 Olympiad. The Chinese authorities will not want to let human rights considerations get in the way of their efforts and have said as much. All the more reason why human rights should be brought to the forefront of any discussions with them. - Yours, etc.,
Terry Butler, Church Road, East Wall, Dublin 3.
