Chinese activists warned against attending Zhao's funeral

Asian Political News, Jan 31, 2005

BEIJING, Jan. 27 Kyodo

At least 300 prominent Christian activists, Falun Gong practitioners and government critics in Beijing will be kept away from a funeral for purged Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang, which is reportedly scheduled for Saturday, people under surveillance said Thursday.

They said they have been told by authorities not to go to Zhao's former residence or to Babaoshan, a Beijing cemetery where his remains are believed to have been taken from Beijing Hospital earlier this week.

Foreign media and political observers in Beijing expect a funeral Saturday, although there has been no official word.

Zhao, who held the post of general secretary of the Communist Party from 1987 to 1989, died Jan. 17 at the age of 85 after being held for 15 years under house arrest for sympathizing with student-led pro-democracy protesters ahead of the June 4, 1989 bloodshed in Tiananmen Square.

The funeral was delayed as the government and Zhao's family disputed whether to bury him in a part of the cemetery for revolutionary leaders and whether to condemn his pre-June 4 statements in his official biography, people close to Zhao say.

Zhao is an icon among Chinese people who oppose the government. Some of the 300 people monitored this week suspect that because of his fall from political favor, Chinese officials fear memorial activities could become rallies for modern-day activists with gripes against the current government.

The 300 Beijing sympathizers were planning to attend the funeral, but now they are all being watched, said a Christian activist checked since Jan. 17 by two police cars outside his apartment.

''They're afraid of us gathering together for a memorial service,'' he said. ''They're always afraid if a dead person comes back to life.''

Since last week, police cars and private security guards sent by state security have stationed outside the flats or houses of people they fear might cause a disturbance at Zhao's open house or at the funeral.

Those watched are followed when they go out to shop or visit friends.

''They told me not to go to Zhao's home,'' said Liang Jinlu, 41, a 1989 Tiananmen Square movement activist who has been watched at his central Beijing house since last week. ''I said I wanted to, but they said, 'don't do it.'''

In a nine-square-block police precinct near the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in west Beijing, security officers are watching seven people, including five people with histories of worshipping Falun Gong, a spiritual movement outlawed in China, said a man surnamed Li. A police car has parked outside the first-story flat of Li and his 90-year-old father since Saturday.

Authorities will punish anyone who goes to the Babaoshan cemetery, where the funeral would likely take place, or to his former home despite orders not to, Li said. ''They want me to go,'' he said. ''Then they'll give me two years in labor reeducation.''

An antigovernment petitioner from Henan Province was beaten last week after he wore a white mourning flower on a visit to the complaints office of the National People's Congress, Radio Free Asia reported.

It said public mourning around Zhao's house had also been stopped and that security had been stepped up around universities to stop students from memorializing Zhao.