We are writing on behalf of the Academic Freedom committee of Human Rights Watch to urge you to press the Chinese government for the release of Dr. Xu Zerong, a noted Oxford-trained historian who has been imprisoned in China for over two years. Dr. Xu, who holds Hong Kong permanent residency, was one of five scholars arrested at roughly the same time. The other four, all of whom had citizenship or permanent residency in the United States, were later released from detention in part due to the principled objections of the international community, including President George W. Bush. The upcoming summit between President Bush and President Jiang Zemin provides an opportunity to demonstrate that U.S. concern about free expression and academic freedom in China extends to all, regardless of their nationality or residency.
According to official Chinese statements, Dr. Xu, 48, was convicted of violating China’s national security laws because of his research and writing. More likely he is being punished for his criticism of the Chinese government. This suspicion is bolstered out by the severity of his sentence.
Dr. Xu was detained in the summer of 2000, and sentenced to thirteen years’ imprisonment on January 29, 2002 on two separate charges. He received a ten-year term for "illegally providing state secrets," for copying and sending historical material dating from the 1950’s about the Korean War to researchers outside China. He received an additional three-year sentence on charges that his Hong Kong-based scholarly publishing business published literature banned in the Chinese mainland.
Under the terms of his current sentence, Dr. Xu will be imprisoned until June 2013. His family has lodged an appeal, which remains pending. Nothing is known about the conditions under which Dr. Xu is being held, other than that officials say he is in good health. However, for at least the first 18 months of his imprisonment he was allowed no visitors or correspondence with his family and lawyers. We are also concerned that his ongoing detention has aggravated a long-standing medical condition.
Aside from the official explanations for the unusually harsh punishment meted out to Dr. Xu, the Chinese government has unofficially accused him of working with British intelligence. The highly regarded Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor has suggested that Dr. Xu’s severe sentence reflected official irritation at an article he wrote regarding contact and cooperation between the Chinese and Malay communist parties. The article characterized the Chinese government’s foreign policy as hypocritical because it rejected
U.S. criticism of Chinese human rights practices as interference in the sovereign affairs of China, while China itself had been involved in the internal affairs of other countries.
From all available evidence, it seems that Dr. Xu is being punished for performing the central task of academic historians: shedding light on previously murky areas of history and questioning the official versions of events. Convicting and imprisoning a historian for such research is a blatant violation of the academic freedom of scholars, in particular their rights to receive and impart information regardless of frontiers. These rights are enshrined in Articles 13 and 15 of the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, which China ratified in February 2001. Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China signed in 1998, commits China to guarantee each person the "freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds." The ongoing detention of Dr. Xu violates these fundamental rights and threatens the academic freedom of all scholars working in or on China.
We respectfully urge you to raise this important matter during meetings with Chinese officials in Texas and to press for the release of Dr. Xu. We look forward to your positive response to this important matter.
Respectfully,
Dr. Yolanda Moses,
President, American Association for Higher Education
Co-Chair, Academic Freedom Committee
Dr. Lisa Anderson
Dean, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
Co-Chair, Academic Freedom Committee
Cc:
Mayor Lee P. Brown of Houston
Lorne Craner, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
James A. Kelly, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs
