By Alfred Miller
Protesters of every stripe descended on midtown Manhattan at the end of September for the United Nations General Assembly.  They queued up in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza across from U.N. Headquarters waiting for their target dignitary and a chance to draw international awareness to their cause. Some were regulars.  Others, however, were new to the scene.  The family of Chinese political prisoner Wang Bingzhang was one such group.  They were the ones responsible for the royal blue minivan decorated on one side with a banner that read, “RELEASE Nobel Peace Prize Candidate Wang Bingzhang.”  Their plan was to cruise through midtown to reach as many people as possible—a rookie mistake.

Wang’s eldest son Hans Ning is driving the van and speaks slowly while avoiding the bikers that weave past the gridlock traffic.  “The intended audience is anybody in the U.N. in general, but specifically right now the world leaders: Obama, the Chinese government representatives, et cetera,” he said.

According to his son, Wang Bingzhang is a free-speaking, God-fearing believer in democracy—and for that he is being jailed.  The political dissident has been in solitary confinement in a southern Chinese prison for the past eleven years. With his health deteriorating and hope fading, Wang’s family is mounting a renewed effort to get him freed.  Family members took turns driving the van.

“Hopefully it gets the attention of some delegates that are there right now,” said Ning, who at birth took his mother’s maiden name as protection from Chinese authorities. Ning is careful to credit his younger sister with the bulk of the mobilizing.  “Most of the work done for my dad has been by my sister right now.  But it’s a lonely road for her and often she’ll ask for our support and I guess that’s why I’m here,” he said. Ning’s sister Ti-Anna Wang had returned home to Toronto the previous day to prepare for a TEDx Toronto Talk she gave about her crusade to free her father.  TEDx Talks are an offshoot of the popular TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conferences.

Wang’s family had also set up a mock prison cell in Times Square.  Supporters took turns sitting cross-legged in the cell, which had bamboo bars.  Many supporters were from the local chapter of the Democracy Party of China (DPC), led by fellow dissident Wang Juntao.  Wang Juntao played a role in organizing the 1989 Tiananmen protests, for which he was jailed.  Wang Bingzhang helped negotiate Juntao’s early release, says Juntao.  He now wants to return the favor.

China Dissident Protest at UN and Beyond

Time may be running out, however.  Wang Bingzhang, 66, has suffered three strokes while in prison, says his son.  Ning visited his father, a medical doctor by training, in 2009 and discovered a changed man. “I remember him as somebody with a lot of energy.  And if you’ve seen him speak—videos of him speaking—he speaks with a lot of passion, but he looked very tired and he was very tired.  He didn’t have a lot of energy,” he said.

In what Dr. Wang’s elder sister Linda Wang describes as a one-day show trial, the Chinese government convicted her brother of espionage and terrorism.  He was sentenced to life in prison, an unusually long sentence for modern political dissidents in China, says Ms. Wang.  He had been visiting Vietnam trying to reach mainland contacts in June 2002 when Chinese government thugs kidnapped him and brought him to China, says his son.

Dr. Wang’s political activism started in 1982, when upon graduation from McGill, he started China Spring, an overseas pro-democracy Chinese magazine, says his sister.  His family felt the fallout immediately, remembers Ms. Wang.  She and numerous family members still in China lost their jobs and only a direct appeal to then-Communist Party Chairman Hu Yaobang allowed her to immigrate to Canada.

Getting her brother out of China this time, will be even harder.  However, she had one more tactic saved for the week after. “Our last option is a hunger strike.  I haven’t done it before.  We’ll see how long I last,” she said.

Reposted from Hildy’s Notepad.