Committee of Concerned Scientists (CCS) is an independent organization that was founded by scientists and scholars in 1972. Today it has 5000 members. Its main purpose is to protect and advance the human rights and scientific freedom of scientists throughout the world. In 1999, it helped two colleagues in China by either sending messages to high-level Chinese or initiating a petition drive via the Internet. This year it started a petition drive on behalf of 11 scientists and students who are persecuted for engaging in pro-democracy advocacy.

October 11, 2000

His Excellency Jiang Zemin

President, People's Republic of China

Zhong Naihai, Beijing,

People's Republic of China

Your Excellency:

We write in defense of colleagues associated with Falun Gong who are being punished for their attempts to peacefully exercise their internationally recognized rights to freedom of belief, expression and association.

As an organization long active in defending and advancing the human rights of scientists and academics around the world, we are appalled at reports that Falun Gong practitioners have been arbitrarily detained, ill-treated and pressured to renounce their beliefs. Some have been assigned to "administrative" detention in forced labor camps for as much as three years without trial. Others have been charged with crimes and sentenced to prison at trials that fell far short of international standards of jurisprudence. Assaults on academic freedom in the form of dismissal from employment and suspensions from universities also give us cause for deep concern.

In particular, we would like to direct your attention to the following individuals:

Hong Jirong, a professor at Sichuan University, sentenced to three years at hard labor because of his suspected involvement in composing and signing a letter to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan from Sichuan Falun Gong practitioners;

Zhang Yong, a post-doctoral fellow in the Chemotherapy Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, detained from mid-April till mid-May of this year, and subsequently discharged from his position and sentenced to a year at hard labor;

Kong Fanfen, a researcher at the Institute of Chemistry and Metallurgy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, whose detention at the Paoju Detention Center was halted when she had to be hospitalized. She was subsequently removed from the hospital, brought to trial and summarily remanded to a forced labor camp for one year despite medical findings that she not be further detained;

Cheng Guangchang, a faculty member of the Petroleum University of East China, who was dismissed for having journeyed to Beijing to petition for Falun Gong;

Twenty-five Students, including seven Ph.D. candidates, suspended from Tsinghua University.

We appeal to your good offices to end the ongoing persecution of our colleagues, who like so many other Falun Gong practitioners are suffering unwarranted abuses of their fundamental freedoms.

Sincerely yours,

Joel L. Lebowitz

Paul H. Plotz

Walter Reich

Co-chairs