ZHOU YONGJUN, a leader of the Beijing Students’ Autonomous Union in the 1989 pro-democracy movement, has been arrested on fraud charges as the Beijing authorities gear up for the 20th anniversary of the June 4th crackdown on Tiananmen Square protests.
Dissidents are already being detained and harassed ahead of the anniversary. Zhou Yongjun had been detained for months at a secret location, his relatives said, after he came back from the US to visit his ailing father.
As a permanent US citizen, his detention could cause friction between Beijing and Washington. His brother Zhou Lin said that he had been formally charged with fraud in his home city of Suining in Sichuan province, and a written arrest warrant had been issued.
Mr Zhou, who is 41, was a law student who helped organise the mass movement demanding democratic reform that took place all across China in 1989, culminating in the occupation by protesters of Tiananmen Square. Troops moved in to remove the demonstrators on June 4th that year and hundreds, or possibly thousands, died.
Family members said they were puzzled how he could have committed fraud, given he had been living in the US for a long time.
After four years in jail following the massacre, Mr Zhou fled to the US. He tried to come back in 1998 and was sentenced to three years of “re-education through labour” in a camp. He returned to the US afterwards.
He was picked up again in September last year in the southern town of Shenzhen when he tried to re-enter China via Hong Kong.
The San Francisco-based rights group, the Dui Hua Foundation, has reduced the number of people it estimates are still serving sentences for offences committed during the protests. The watchdog now believes there are around 30 individuals still incarcerated, and the foundation said it hopes the Chinese government will commute their sentences.
Dui Hua had previously estimated that 50 to 60 prisoners remained incarcerated. Many of these were young workers at the time who reacted angrily when the soldiers opened fire on the protesters.