Saturday 24 February, Chinese scholar and human rights defender Dr. Jianli Yang was in Italy after having participated at the UN opening of the 10th Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, alongside other prominent human rights defenders. He drew attention to the increasing influence exerted by China on a global scale and stressed the need to promote the universal value of the Human Rights Declaration.
He also spoke at Radio Radicale with Matteo Angioli and Laura Harth, where he recalled the massacre of Square Tiananmen in 1989. Jianli was there representing a group of overseas Chinese students. He managed to escape the bloodbath, but a few years later he got arrested and sentenced to a 5-year detention in Beijing (from 2002 to 2007) as political prisoner. From Radio Radicale he underlined the necessity for dissidents and minorities across the world to join their forces in order to counter the effects of the prevailing power of authoritarian rulers guided by what seems to be a stronger global “reason d’etat”.
It is a great honor for us to announce that Yang Jianli, who is also a member of the Nonviolent Radical Party Transnational Transparty, has joined the Global Committee for the Rule of Law “Marco Pannella” as one of the Honorary members.
Matteo Angioli
