U.N. Backs Detained Chinese K-School Alum

The intensive efforts to secure the release of activist Yang Jianli, who received a doctorate from the Kennedy School of Government and has been detained in China for more than a year, received the backing of the United Nations (U.N.) yesterday.

A committee of the U.N. Human Rights Commission ruled that China has violated international law by holding Yang for a prolonged period without a lawyer, a trial or any formal charges, according to an opinion made public yesterday.

Yang’s supporters said the announcement will lend credibility to their cause and aid in lobbying the Bush administration and foreign governments even if it is unlikely to lead directly to Yang’s release.

Yang was banned from China for his role as an organizer of the Tiananmen Square demonstration of 1989, and was arrested last year 10 days after he arrived in the country to research labor unrest.

Yang has not been heard from since he made calls to his wife and a reporter within 24 hours of his initial detention.

Yang’s wife, Harvard Medical School Researcher Christina X. Fu, and Jared Genser, a lawyer and classmate of Yang’s at the Kennedy School, have led the international campaign to advocate for Yang’s release.

Genser and Fu held a press conference in Washington today, joined by three members of Congress, to formally announce the U.N. decision and call for Yang’s release.

The campaign has attracted the attention and support of major political figures. The website for Freedom Now, the non-profit organization of which Genser is the president, lists the names of such prominent politicians as Massachusetts’ Democratic Senators John Kerry and Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy ’54-’56, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, and Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers.

House Resolution 199, which also calls for his release, is currently before the House International Relations Committee, Genser said, and has been signed by 43 members of Congress.

Genser said that the body which gave the opinion, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, aims for “discretion, objectivity, impartiality and independence.” France, Algeria, Paraguay, Hungary and Iran have representatives on the working group.

According to Genser, the group consists of some countries that “do not have, shall we say, the most prominent human rights record,” but he said that this may add credibility to the decision.

“It makes it more clear that it is not just the United States trying to impose its own views,” he said.

Genser said that since Yang was taken into custody on April 26, 2002, Chinese authorities have not provided information “to anyone on the outside.”

“It has now been almost 13 months and we have literally heard absolutely nothing,” he said.

Genser said he expects to use the U.N. decision to stir support for Yang’s case. The U.N. action will also help Yang’s supporters advocate for him with the U.S. and other governments, he said.

“I think that we are now in the position to call on the Bush administration to escalate the pressure that they have put on the Chinese government,” Genser said.

“Now that we have this international validation I think we have a much easier case going to other nations,” he added.

Genser said he will encourage Yang’s case to be a topic of discussion in high level meetings between the leaders of the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

“We are going to urge that the case be raised in those high level meetings and if not we are going to want an explanation,” he said.

Genser described China’s handling of the Yang case as another illustration of the lack of transparency in the Chinese government, much like the manipulation of numbers in the recent SARS epidemic.

This lack of transparency has been a point of contention in the expanding efforts at diplomatic and economic cooperation between the United States and China, and Genser said the Yang case is only making things worse.

“I think the Chinese are, by their actions, putting in play an unnecessary irritant in the relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China,” he said.

Instead, the organization works to free “prisoners of conscience,” Genser said. In Yang’s case, Freedom Now is advocating only adherence to national and international law.

“We are not asking for anything more than that they comply with their own laws,” he said.

In a statement, the Chinese government accused Yang of “illegally crossing the state frontier” and said he “might also have committed other offenses.”

He added that Freedom Now has previously won freedom for clients shortly after similar U.N. working group opinions, although the decision itself may not “necessarily” have been the reason for release.

Ramsey Professor of Political Economy Richard J. Zeckhauser ’62, who advised Yang’s thesis and last year organized a letter of support that eventually received the signatures of 34 Kennedy School Professors, said China’s handling of the case could eventually effect the country economically.

“Ultimately it will have an impact, if enough people get concerned,” Zeckhauser said. “People will say, ‘The Chinese are unreliable. Do I want to go do business in China? Maybe I’ll get detained if they don’t like what I’ve done.’”

Yang is the president and founder of the Foundation for China in the 21st century, an organization funded in part by the National Endowment for Democracy.

Yang’s wife, Fu, could not be reached for comment.

—Staff writer David B. Rochelson can be reached at rochels@fas.harvard.edu.