Word: weies
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...broader movement to restore law-and-order that also includes the recent crackdown on China's tiny dissident movement. Last week Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, talking to a delegation from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, defended the stiff 15-year sentence meted out six weeks ago to Human Rights Activist Wei Jingsheng on the ground that "we needed to make an example of him." At the same time, the centerpiece of the human rights movement, Peking's famed "democracy wall," came under official attack. Meeting in Peking, members of China's National People's Congress demanded that "resolute...
...Peking's famed "democracy wall" last week, a group of young people were selling transcripts of the trial of China's leading dissident, Wei Jingsheng, 29. He had been sentenced to 15 years in prison last month on charges of counterrevolutionary activity, and passing military data to foreigners. Suddenly, about 50 uniformed security policemen swooped down on the crowd of several hundred people gathered at the wall. Scuffling with foreign observers at the scene the police confiscated about 500 copies of the trial transcript and arrested three would-be buyers and a man who was helping sell copies...
...Forum editors' decision to distribute the text of the Wei trial spelled their downfall. After obtaining a tape recording of the 5½-hour proceedings, they first posted a transcript on democracy wall where it was read by thousands of people during the next three weeks. This limited access to the transcript was tolerated. But when it went on sale at 17? a copy the authorities evidently felt that they could not risk having it circulate throughout China. Wei, who had conducted his own defense at his trial, charged that China had scarcely changed since the ouster...
Last week's arrests, like Wei's trial, were violations in spirit of the much touted restoration of the rule of law in China, which includes a guarantee of open trials where the accused's rights are to be fully respected. After the Forum editor was imprisoned, police claimed that it was a crime to sell a trial transcript without court authorization, even though Wei's trial had theoretically been open to everyone. In fact, it had been closed to his relatives, friends and to the foreign press; tickets had been distributed to factory workers...
...Carter III, who for the first time since Washington established relations with Peking openly criticized China's human rights practices. It remains to be seen whether tough penal ties will squelch the reforming zeal of Chi na's small but active democratic move ment. Predicted one of Wei's colleagues at Tansuo last week: "The longer the sentence they give him, the more unseen trou ble there will be in the future...