NEWS - Rights groups demand release

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Subject: NEWS - Rights groups demand release of dissidents and end to brutality

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST - Saturday, October 2, 1999

CHINA - NATIONAL DAY

Rights groups demand release of dissidents and end to brutality
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

International human rights groups marked the anniversary with calls for
the
release of political prisoners and allegations of systemised brutality.
"The communist regime has been directly responsible for the deaths of
over
80 million Chinese citizens," said the Washington-based Free China
Movement.

"Let us not forget what 50 years of communist dictatorship has brought
on
the people of China: famine, starvation, slave and forced labour,
unspeakable cruelties, fierce political and religious persecutions - in
sum,
one of the world's worst records on human rights," said Timothy Cooper,
a
spokesman for the group.

The harsh criticism came after a call for Beijing to release all
prisoners
of conscience.

To celebrate the anniversary, China should release "all prisoners and
detainees held for the peaceful expression of their views", the New
York-based Human Rights Watch urged.

"China's history over the last half century has been marked by the
designation of new 'enemies of the people' and the rehabilitation of old
ones," said Sidney Jones, the group's Asia director.

"This anniversary should be an occasion to declare a general amnesty for
all
and to start the next half-century - and the next millennium - on a
sound
human rights footing."

New York-based Human Rights in China lashed out at Beijing for turning
back
student Huang Ciping at Shanghai airport when she arrived to visit her
father, whom it said was dangerously ill.

Ms Huang appeared to have angered the authorities by joining a
pro-democracy
student association while she was studying in the United States, it
said.

London-based Amnesty International said in an open letter to the Chinese
Government on Tuesday that recent crackdowns on democracy campaigners
and
the Falun Gong mystical sect had "turned the clock backwards".