Protest at Chinese Embassy

Amnesty International (AI) members and supporters picketed the Chinese Embassy in Chisinau on Wednesday. The protesters carried posters and chanted slogans urging the Chinese authorities to grant amnesty to prisoners jailed following the Tiananmen protests in 1989, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to the executive director of the AI office to Moldova, Evghenii Golosceapov, the action marks the 19th anniversary since the bloody clamp down on the students protesting on the Tiananmen square in Beijing. The organization expresses its protest as to restricitng alternative opinions and persecuting human rights defenders and civil activists in China. AI pleads for the immediate and unconditional liberation of the people jailed 19 years ago. “If the Tiananmen activists are set free, if justice is made concerning the relatives of the killed and if commemorating the victims in public is allowed, a step will be made towards establishing a positive tradition on the Olympics' eve,” Evghenii Golosceapov said. Students started to protest in 1989 on Beijing's Tiananmen square, which shortly expanded to other cities and large provinces from China. The protesters asked authorities to combat corruption, to launch democratic reforms in political and social rights. On the night from 3 to 4 June, 1989, the Chinese army brought tanks on Tiananmen, as hundreds unarmed people got killed and arrests followed all over the country. AI was set up in 1961 in Britain and has the status of an official council for Human Rights of the UN and the Council of Europe.