Just under two years ago, the Chinese activist and blogger Zhang Zhan was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison because she had reported on China’s Covid management on social media.
“She is a journalist who used her right to free speech to report on what happened in Wuhan in early 2020. Because of this, she’s been in prison since and is currently critically ill,” said Olivier Pirot, director of Amnesty International Luxembourg.
Amnesty collected over 1,300 letters with their campaign “Write for Rights” and was hoping to hand these to the Chinese ambassador in Dommeldange.
“We had contacted them a few times through letters and the phone, without receiving a positive answer, but without aggressiveness, either. But we didn’t want to ignore the voices of those 1,300 people who are worried about Zhang Zhan,” added Pirot.
The 12 demonstrators folded the letters into paper planes and flew them through the gates of the embassy.
Pirot explained that Zhang’s case is just one of many human rights violations in China:
“There are millions of executions, countless free speech violations and also torture perpetrated on populations in smaller Chinese regions. Thousands of people in China are affected by human rights violations.”
The event outside the embassy was short and had pretty much wrapped up by the time police sirens could be heard. No fewer than six police cars turned up and the officers fined the Amnesty director for the protest.
With the eyes of the world on China for the current Winter Olympics, we must not ignore the human rights violations taking place in the country, said Olivier Pirot.
Addressing the Grand Duke directly, he said:
“Since we have a representative for Luxembourg in China, who is also a member of the IOC, I am encouraging him to use every moment he has to tell Chinese authorities how much Luxembourg and its residents are worried about human rights generally in China, and more specifically cases like Zhang Zhan.”
Further information can be found here.
