Diverse Crowd Joins Ranks for Rights Protest

Groups From Across Spectrum Voice Their Outrage at Abuses

Demonstrators drawn from the ranks of Chinese dissidents in exile, Tibetan monks and American groups from across the political spectrum converged on a park across from the White House yesterday to protest human rights violations in China and Tibet.

Under a sparkling autumn sky, professionals in suits and ties mingled at Lafayette Square with monks, Chinese activists carrying pictures of jailed dissidents, and many other demonstrators who said they had no affiliation with any group, just a sense of outrage. The rally was the largest protest scheduled in Washington during the stop here of Chinese President Jiang Zemin on his eight-day U.S. tour.

Hours before the noontime protest, Jiang, the first Chinese leader to visit Washington since the Chinese army crushed the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement, stepped onto a red carpet for an official welcome by President Clinton on the South Lawn. During part of the protest, Jiang was in meetings with Clinton. Then his motorcade left from a back entrance -- well shielded from the rally -- for a State Department lunch hosted by Vice President Gore.

At a news conference yesterday afternoon, Jiang made a dismissive reference to the protest, which appeared to attract well more than 1,000 people, saying that "sometimes noises came into my ears." There were no official crowd estimates by the Park Police.

Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, one of several groups that organized the rally, opened her remarks remembering the Chinese Army's firing on demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, and Jiang's statement two years later that the incident was "much ado about nothing."

With such a government, she said, "there can be no common ground."

The speakers came from a broad array of sources, including labor unions, human rights groups, the religious right, Hollywood and Congress. They catalogued a host of Chinese government human rights violations, including the suppression of political and religious freedoms, particularly in Tibet, the imprisonment of dissidents who advocate peaceful change, and the export of goods made by prison labor.

"When you have a great issue about American values -- and this is what the rally represents -- you tend to get a broad coalition," said Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group opposed to abortion and homosexuality.

"I'd rather be part of this unusual coalition than the one across the street -- the Man from Hope and the Butcher of Beijing," he said.

Tong Yi, the former assistant to China's most prominent political prisoner, Wei Jingsheng, said she found it almost "too painful" to address the crowd. At this moment, she said, "Wei is being tortured to death in a Chinese prison."

Before the summit, human rights groups were hoping Beijing would release some political prisoners, including Wei, who has spent all but six months of the last 18 years in jail, and former student leader Wang Dan on medical parole.

Bette Bao Lord, a writer whose husband, Winston Lord, was a former U.S. envoy to Beijing, spoke of the shame she felt as an ethnic Chinese after the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown, in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, died. Earlier in the day, she attended a news conference given by 20 Chinese dissidents in exile, part of the democratic opposition, who spoke of their determination to fight for Chinese democracy.

Lord, who planned to attend last night's state dinner honoring Jiang, said she chose to appear at the different forums to show Jiang that "people who disagree in America" are not threats to stability.

Among celebrities speaking to the crowd was actor Richard Gere, in a black leather jacket, whose few phrases in Tibetan were wildly cheered by monks and other pro-Tibet supporters. In an interview, Gere expressed dismay that Jiang was "allowed to co-opt" images of American freedom and democracy during a stop in Colonial Williamsburg on Wednesday and his scheduled visit today to the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

"There is a certain cynicism in allowing him to visit those sites and parrot the words of Thomas Jefferson," Gere said. If someone were to paste a copy of the Declaration of Independence on a wall in China or Tibet, he continued, "he would be arrested, beaten and possibly killed."

In the crowd, a colorful assortment of signs and banners in Chinese and English called for greater religious freedom in Tibet, a halt to slave labor in China, and no interference by China in Taiwan. On stage, a 250-pound, eight-foot-tall plaster statue of the Goddess of Democracy, the symbol of the Chinese prodemocracy movement, loomed over the speakers.

Brad Reiman, of Washington, argued passionately with a group of Chinese students attending George Washington University who were walking across the park as they left the White House ceremony welcoming Jiang.

Wang Lanzhi, an engineering major, argued that by American standards, it may seem there are human rights abuses in China. But just as different families have different rules, nations will naturally have different standards, he said.

Eight-year-old Cecilia Ticktin, of Roosevelt, N.J., came for her first demonstration with her father, a veteran of anti-war and civil rights marches. Around her head she wore a band that said in Chinese characters, "They can kill you, but not your ideas." Her parents, she said, wanted her to remember and stand up for people less blessed with freedom and material goods.

Jimmy Gambrell, of Edgefield, S.C., drove 10 hours with his wife, Vicki, taking the "one-in-a-million shot" that he would be able get a word with Jiang.

"I got it in my heart last Sunday to try and reach him and witness to him about Jesus," said Gambrell, a professional photographer and Sunday school teacher in a Pentecostal church. He hadn't planned what he would say if he got the chance to speak to Jiang, saying God would have given him the words had the opportunity arisen.

Jiang could hear more direct criticism this morning when he attends a breakfast with congressional leaders. Yesterday, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said he was boycotting the meeting "because of the Chinese government's continued harassment and persecution of Christians and other people of faith."

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.