Belfast Chinese back Amnesty campaign

I talked to a Hong Kong Chinese couple who have made their home in Northern Ireland on Wednesday.  The conversation took place in Belfast city centre where I was with Amnesty supporters to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The couple were in town shopping, but drawn by our large display of that iconic picture of the lone protestor confronting a column of tanks, they made an immediate beeline for our campaign presence to sign postcards in solidarity with the Tiananmen Mothers. The events of May and June 1989 had left an indelible mark on the pair and they wanted to show their support for our campaign for human rights for the Chinese people.

In Northern Ireland most Chinese people keep their heads down and don't get politically involved (for understandable reasons), so it was all the more heartening that this couple wanted to add their names to the many others who joined our campaign on Wednesday (sign the petition here).

Meanwhile, let me draw attention to a fine blog on OpenDemocracy from Hong Kong legislator Emily Lau, drawing on and strongly endorsing Amnesty's campaign for Human Rights in China.

It was published to coincide with the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings but gives a good round up of domestic human rights concerns in China, focusing particularly on freedom for human rights defenders such as Yang Chunlin, "a human-rights defender from Heilongjiang province who supported a legal action brought by over 40,000 farmers whose land had been confiscated without compensation."

You can take action for him online with Amnesty.