By Gabriel Latner - from the National Post
In his victory speech, Prime Minister Harper spoke of making Canada “truly strong and free”, and the “best country in the world, but always striving to be better.” It makes for nice rhetoric, but if the Prime Minister truly believes in freedom, and its pre-eminence in Canada’s culture, he will publicly demand China release Dr. Wang Bingzhang.
Wang Binghzhang represents the kind of immigrant Canada’s successes have been built on. He studied hard at McGill, eventually earning a PhD in pathology — all while raising a family. Dr. Wang is dedicated to the Canadian values of freedom, democracy and peace. According to his daughter, it was this dedication that lead him to try bring these values to his native land of China. He co-founded the International Pro-Chinese Democracy Movement, and played a key role in organizing the Tienanmen Square protests in 1989. For these actions, he is hated by the Chinese government. That raises the question over how much China can truly claim to respect Canada — it treats our values as threats to its own existence.
When Dr. Wang was in Vietnam in 2002, China “disappeared” him — they sent a team to kidnap him and take him to China, where he was held secretly for months. When Dr. Wang’s family finally found out where he was, the news only got worse. Dr. Wang had been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment — without any evidence or witnesses to condemn him. He is currently in solitary confinement. All this for the “crime” of preaching the merits of democracy and human rights, the birthrights of all Canadians.
So far, Canada’s official response has been lacking. In 2003, a parliamentary standing committee submitted a report, noting that the standing committee — not even Parliament — “Calls upon the Chinese Government to release Dr. Wang Bingzhang from prison, and permit him to be reunited with his family and colleagues.” Nothing further has been said in the eight years since.
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