Chinese Release Librarian After Outcry from Scholars

By Hans Johnson

Chinese officials detained Song and his wife, Helen Yao, in August on the suspicion that they were unlawfully removing documents bearing state secrets from the country. Song had traveled to China, his native land, with Yao to conduct research on the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the period of intense and often deadly convulsions within the Chinese Communist Party from 1966 to 1976. While authorities released Yao in November, they formally arrested Song in December and charged him with "the purchase and illegal provision of intelligence to foreign people." Song adamantly denied the charges.

AAUP general secretary Mary Burgan wrote repeatedly to the Chinese ambassador in Washington to encourage Song's return. And beginning in September, AAUP staff members contacted officials in the U.S. Congress and State Department, and issued e-mail alerts calling for Song's release to faculty members across the country, who in turn relayed them to their own domestic and international networks. The missives from scholars triggered by these and other efforts assured Chinese officials that Song's safety and ultimate freedom were a paramount concern of his academic colleagues.

In her letters, Burgan disputed the charges against the scholar, explaining that he was simply "collecting published accounts" as part of research that was "purely academic," not engaging in any subterfuge or subversion. "We object most strenuously to this characterization of Mr. Song's academic research," Burgan wrote.

After arriving in Detroit, his first stateside destination on the homebound trek, Song reiterated his insistence that the charges were bogus. "All those charges are very ridiculous," he told Reuters. Song also denied the claim made by Chinese officials that he had confessed to their accusations before his release.

While his imprisonment kept him out of direct touch with the human-rights protests in Seattle during last December's World Trade Organization (WTO) talks, Song remained mindful of the leverage that the organization retains over powerhouses like China. He cited China's hopes of winning entry to the WTO--and its attendant worry about ruinous public relations--as one reason for his release.

But the outcry from colleagues was crucial, according to Yao and Song. "I can clearly remember reading your letter to the Chinese ambassador with tears in my eyes," Yao wrote to the AAUP after the ordeal. "It was the first and bravest letter [to the ambassador] to defend academic freedom as well as human rights." Song himself wrote to the AAUP upon his release to express his appreciation: "Without your petition letter, without the rescue efforts by Dickinson College, the State Department, lawmakers in Congress, and friends from all over the world, my academic career would have ended in a dark jail cell." Song, who was to have become an American citizen in September 1999, also vowed to continue his research on China's Cultural Revolution for "the rest of my life."

For defenders of academic freedom, achieving the scholar's release signified an important victory in a struggle that increasingly transcends national boundaries. According to Ruth Flower, director of AAUP government relations, "Scholars can and will come to each other's aid, even when one is stranded half a world away."

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