Historical recovery status: Verified Mirror Recovery. Originally dated June 20, 1998. Restored to the FreeChina.live historical web archive on September 11, 2026.
Historical source: A surviving mirror of a Free China Movement press release at chinadp.tripod.com preserves the original FreeChina.net-era page, contact block, site navigation, and substantive English text. Original site attribution on the mirror identifies FreeChina.net.
Recovered historical record
The June 20, 1998 release reported that 56 dissidents inside China had signed an open letter asking U.S. President Bill Clinton to meet their representative, Xu Wenli, during his China visit. The release described many signatories as former political or religious prisoners of conscience and said they wanted to raise continuing human-rights violations and the imprisonment of political and religious prisoners.
The release also announced plans for a Free China Movement press conference and public actions in Washington, including a protest near the Chinese Embassy on June 23 and a planned hunger strike near the White House. It characterized the signed appeal as a major open and organized dissident action after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
The historical release identified Shengde Lian as executive director of the newly formed international Free China Movement coalition and described the movement as being in contact with Xu Wenli and other dissidents in China.
Provenance
- Original date: June 20, 1998
- Recovered from: contemporary/near-contemporary FreeChina.net mirror
- Mirror URL: https://chinadp.tripod.com/pr/pr620.html
- Historical domain shown by source: http://www.freechina.net/
- Recovery classification: Verified Mirror Recovery
- Recovery date: September 11, 2026
Archival note: This page preserves the historical record while avoiding silent modernization of the original 1998 claims. Names, dates, organizational descriptions, and historical context should be read as part of the record of that period. Where a full original copy is independently recovered from a dated web archive, this entry may be upgraded to Verbatim Archive Recovery with the original file preserved separately.