China urged to free Tiananmen-era prisoners

BEIJING (Reuters) - A New York-based human rights watchdog urged China on Tuesday to honor its commitment to improve its rights record before the Beijing Olympics by freeing some 130 Tiananmen-era prisoners.

Human Rights Watch made the call on the eve of the 19th anniversary of the People's Liberation Army's crushing of student-led demonstrations for democracy centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

Human Rights Watch asked China to issue a complete list of those killed, injured or jailed as no such lists are publicly available. As recently as 2004, at least 130 people arrested in the wake of the protests were still in prison, the watchdog said.

Another rights group, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy on Monday had quoted an unnamed source as saying some 20,000 people were detained in the wake of the protests nationwide.

Around 15,000 of those detained were charged as counter-revolutionaries or other crimes and 70 were issued death sentences that were carried out immediately, the group had said, quoting a source close to late Chinese President Yang Shangkun.

The source said Yang had said that more than 600 people died in the Tiananmen protests. Yang died in 1998.

"The Chinese government should show the global Olympic audience it's serious about human rights by releasing the Tiananmen detainees," Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement received by e-mail.

"Beijing's use of Tiananmen Square as a macabre prop for China's Olympic 'coming-out-party' adds insult to injury."

There was no immediate government comment.