Shao’s home was raided and his computer equipment seized, said Wang and Wu’er, who like Shao were part of the student-led democracy movement in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 which ended in a bloody crackdown by Chinese troops.
Advertisement
Shao Jiang, 47, was arrested in London Wednesday after scaling barriers and standing in front of Xi’s motorcade holding placards.
Two other pro-Tibetan activists, Sonam, 31, and Jamphel, 33, were also arrested after protesting at Mansion House on Wednesday.
The Met Police confirmed Shao had been detained along with the two pro-Tibet activists.
“I was really shocked”.
“This is Britain and it shouldn’t be like that”. Now they are a regular fixture on the London Chinese dissident scene, where they had thought that they would be guaranteed freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protest.
“These people were treated as if they were terrorist activities or something, it’s too much”.
Amnesty representative Allan Hogarth said: “This looks like a very heavy handed response to a peaceful demonstration”.
He added: “Shao Jiang has witnessed a lot in his life”.
“Ordinary English people do not like your president and do not like China’s human rights abuses”.
“It is deeply worrying that the UK Government appears keen to push human rights to one side in pursuit of trade”. The apparent basis for these detentions: preventing, “breaches of the peace” and “suspicion of conspiracy to commit threatening behavior”.
“When I was told by the police he had been arrested, it was like I was back in China again, ” she said.
The Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network, which translates and collates reports from rights groups working inside China, said Jiangsu activist Shen Aibin had recently come forward with a detailed account of his torture at the hands of Chinese police in 2013. “It’s just like China now”.
“In an article published on the website of British newspaper The Guardian, Martin Jacques said: “(British Prime Minister David) Cameron’s claim that the United Kingdom could be “China’s best partner in the West” was not empty rhetoric, nor was the idea of a “golden decade” in Sino-British relations”.
Jiang was among a group who gathered in secret in a Beijing university to draft the demands of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
Mr Passang told the Standard the protestors had been released on bail, and said the Tibetan community would be raising questions about the arrests.
“The policing of the state visit was a matter for the Metropolitan Police Service and any other suggestion is wrong”, she added.
Advertisement
“I was protesting peacefully”, the Independent quoted him as saying. Either way, it remains to be seen whether President Xi will be gifting them with Peng Liyuan albums to help make their prison stay more comfortable. It was never an “either/or” choice.
