By Ariel Lin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China – Last Saturday marked “Qingming”- grave-sweeping day, when Chinese honor the dead. A 75-year-old retired professor, Sun Wenguang, was beaten for honoring the death of a reformist communist leader Zhao Ziyang on Saturday. Mr. Zhao is a former prime minister and Communist Party general secretary who was purged for supporting the 1989 Tiananmen protests.
In 2005, Mr Zhao died under house arrest.

According to Mr. Sun, a police car followed him when he went to visit a memorial honoring Chinese martyrs on Heroes’ Mountain in Jinan.  When he entered the memorial grounds, he was beaten and “kicked like a football” for more than 10 minutes by a group of five men.

“They were very strong. They did not say a word,” Sun said in a telephone interview from a Jinan hospital.  “They wanted to punish me and let people know that Zhao Ziyang is not allowed to be memorialized,” he claimed.  Mr. Sun suffered three broken ribs and injuries to his hands and legs in the attack.  It was not clear who the men were.

Mr Sun is a retired physics professor from Shandong University.  He spent some times in prison from the 1960s to the 1980s, for criticizing communist leader Mao.  He said he had paid his respects at Zhao Ziyang’s grave every year on the Qingming, but was warned not to do so this year by police and officials from Shandong University.

Human Rights in China condemned the attack on Mr Sun.  “This deplorable act, committed in broad daylight and in clear view of the police… calls into serious question officials’ professed commitment to building a society that puts people first,” said executive director Sharon Hom.

Human Rights Defenders, a Hong Kong-based group, says that “Chinese authorities are staging a campaign of terror to intimidate and suppress expressions of commemoration for the 1989 Tiananmen massacre,” the group said in a statement. The attack on Mr. Sun “is part of the overall campaign.”

For more information, please see:

AP – Professor beaten for honoring ousted China leader – 07 April 2009

BBC – Scholar beaten at Tiananmen grave – 07 April 2009

Human Rights in China – Retired Professor Attacked after Honoring Memory of Late Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang – 06 April 2009

New York Times – China Rights Activist Beaten in Cemetery – 07 April 2009