Shuang Deng <shuang@cs.ualberta.ca> (06/05/90)
Hi, everyone;
Today is the anniversary of the June 4th Massacre in Beijing, China.
Telecommunications have played an important role in the democracy
movement in China. Here are two stories, one is about a dissident
arrest tipped by his LD call, and the other is the escape of a
dissident thanks to telecommunication.
Report One:
A Trunk Call Led to A Prominent Chinese Dissident's Arrest
----------------------
No one knew exactly how Mr Wang Juntao, a prominent Chinese dissident
was arrest until one of his colleagues escaped from China to US
recently. She told several newspapers the following story.
"Juntao hid in Beijing for a while following the 4 June incident. With
the situation getting tense, he finally decided to go south in an
attempt to establish contact with overseas rescue organizations.
However, we lost contact with him soon after his departure from
Beijing and were even unaware of his whereabouts. We eventually knew
about his arrest in Beijing from a classified bulletin circulating
within the provincial and army levels which noted that Wang Juntao, an
evil backstage manipulator of the rebellion, had been captured. The
classified bulletin also disclosed that Juntao fled to Changsha, the
capital of Hunan Province. There he failed to get in touch with
members of the local student movement. He felt quite hopeless and made
a trunk call to Hong Kong rescue organization, at great risk, to
request rescue and for him to be sent the necessary travel documents."
"Before long, a self-claimed Hong Kong rescue organization rang
Juntao, saying that rescue work would start soon at a cost of about
10,000 yuan. Juntao said he had only 8,000 yuan or so. His
counterpart said in reply that money was not so important and they had
to meet as quickly as possible to discuss how to flee. Both sides then
agreed that they would meet in a coach of a train bound from Changsha
to a certain place because Juntao did not tell his counterpart where
he was staying. When Juntao entered the coach on schedule, he
immediately noticed something wrong -- other coaches were very crowded
but there were only a few people in the coach he entered. When he
tried to open a window to jump out public security personnel in plain
clothes, hiding inside and outside the coach, all drew their pistols
from their pockets."
Apart from what she had learned from the classified bulletin, she
heard two other versions of Wang's arrest in Beijing. One was that the
the authorities had installed the most advanced tapping device in
Shenzhen, which can monitor all trunk calls from Hong Kong to the
mainland. The other was that Chinese special agents in overseas rescue
organizations divulged secret information.
Report Two
A Direct Dial Call Rescued A Chinese Dissident
---------------------
A famous Chinese writer and dissident found his way fleeing out of
Beijing after the June 4th Massacre, and arrived at Guangdong
(Canton), a big city close to HongKong. He tried his best to escape
to HongKong, but only found that all the roads were paroled by
soldiers around clock and check-points were set up at main
intersections. Several weeks past while he was keeping desperately
looking for a way out to safety. He dared not to call friends for
help as he realized all long distance calls at the public phones had
to go through operators who usually had the order to monitor the
conversations (mostly not for connection quality, but for
counter-revolutionaries). One day on his move from one hiding place
to another, he was delighted to see a billboard at a new phonebooth
saying that, with the advanced techniques provided by a foreign
company, this particular phone could dial overseas directly without
operators. So, he came back at night and called a friend in HongKong
who, he believed, must have contact with local democracy
organizations. The next day, a person came from Hong Kong and took him
out to freedom.
This story was said by the writer himself at a meeting here at U of Alberta.
Shuang Deng (shuang@cs.Ualberta.CA)