By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries
MIDLAND, TX (ANS) -- Sichuan activist Ding Mao, who was arrested by Chinese authorities for forwarding Twitter messages calling for a Chinese Jasmine Revolution, and charged with subversion, was released on Friday.
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Photo: Ding Mao with his wife and son after his release on Friday (Courtesy of Chinese Human Rights Defenders) |
At the time of his arrest, Ding was general manager of an investment company in Mianyang. He is also a founder of the Social Democratic Party. During the 1989 Tiananmen Square student democracy movement, Ding was a student of philosophy at Lanzhou University in Gansu province and became a student leader in the protests.
He had already spent about nine years in jail during two previous imprisonments, first in 1989 and again in 1992 when he was arrested for organizing the Social Democratic Party.
Other cyber-dissidents and advocates of civil society were arrested at the same time as Ding. They include Chen Wei and Ran Yunfei, who were prosecuted on the same charge as Ding. Ran was released in August, but put under six-month's of house arrest during which he is forbidden to express himself publicly.
They are among dozens of dissidents, activists and lawyers who have been illegally detained or who have disappeared into government custody since February.
But now, after his release, ChinaAid founder and president Bob Fu has made the following statement: “We welcome this good news of the release of the innocent Chinese Internet activist Mr. Ding Mao. His release was long overdue.
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Feng Xia with Joe Pitts, left, and Frank Wolf, right (Photo: ChinaAid) |
“We believe that the tireless efforts of U.S. officials and diplomats helped win Mr. Ding's release. We thank the Administration officials, especially U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner, and congressional leaders, including Chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Ms. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Congressmen Frank Wolf, Joe Pitts and Chris Smith, all of whom met with Mr. Ding’s wife, Feng Xia, in person when she was hosted by ChinaAid to visit the United States in late October.
“Mr. Ding’s release shows that persistent diplomacy does work. We therefore urge the Administration and congressional leaders to renew their efforts and press even more fervently for the release of other Chinese prisoners of conscience, the majority of whom have been imprisoned for far longer than Mr. Ding.”
Fu went on to say, “We remember in particular the Uyghur house church leader Alimujiang, serving a 15-year sentence; Christian human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who was kidnapped by police nearly three years ago and has disappeared into police custody; and the blind rights activist Chen Guangcheng, who has been held totally incommunicado with his wife in their home since he finished serving his four-year prison term and who has been brutally beaten by local officials three times this year.”
For more information, please go to: www.ChinaAid.org www.MonitorChina.org
| Dan Wooding, 70, is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 48 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS) and was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. He now hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on KWVE in Southern California which is also carried throughout the United States. The program is also aired in Great Britain on Calvary Chapel Radio UK and also in Belize and South Africa. Besides this, Wooding is a host for His Channel Live, which is carried via the Internet to some 200 countries and also provides a regular commentary for Worship Life Radio on KWVE. You can follow Dan Wooding on Facebook under his name there or at ASSIST News Service. He is the author of some 44 books. Two of the latest include his autobiography, “From Tabloid to Truth”, which is published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, press this link. Wooding, who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, has also recently released his first novel “Red Dagger” which is available this link. |  |
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