Wang was serving an 11-year sentence for
plotting to overthrow China's government
By Andrew Browne,
The release of Wang Dan from prison on medical parole had
been widely expected as a goodwill gesture linked to Clinton's
visit in late June for a bilateral summit.
Wang, 29, was serving an 11-year sentence for plotting to
overthrow the government. His family had urged him to accept
exile in return for freedom as his health declined.
The United States welcomed the release.
"This is something we have been urging them to do for quite
some time, and it is a positive sign," said White House
spokesman Eric Rubin, who is part of Clinton's entourage at the
Summit of the Americas in the Chilean capital of Santiago.
China's most famous dissident, Wei Jingsheng, was freed in
November after the last China-U.S. summit in Washington and sent
to the United States for medical treatment.
Human rights groups welcomed the latest release, but
complained that China was masking continuing rights abuses by
playing a cynical political game ahead of Clinton's visit. They
urged the release of all prisoners of conscience.
Beijing calculates that in exile the voices of its
troublesome opponents will be drowned out, and the moral
authority they enjoyed in jail will fade.
With Wei and now Wang gone, China's fractious dissident
community has lost the last of its leaders of international
stature.
Wang left his prison in northeast Liaoning province
Saturday after medical checks and was driven to Beijing during
the night with his parents, who had been summoned from the
capital, according to his mother, Wang Lingyun.
A Hong Kong-based human rights group said he was on board
Northwest Airlines flight NW88, which left at 8.55 a.m. (0055
GMT) bound for Detroit.
"He said he wanted to get medical treatment and further his
studies," Wang Lingyun said.
"But he also said he hoped to return one day to his own
country."
Wang was on China's most wanted list after the Tiananmen
Square protests were crushed by army machine-guns with heavy
loss of life June 3 and 4, 1989.
He was arrested in a nationwide dragnet and jailed for four
years.
Upon his release, he continued to speak out for greater
political freedom and democracy, and he was detained again in
1995. A Beijing court sentenced him to 11 years in prison in
October 1996.
"He seemed quite calm," said Wang Lingyun, speaking from
her Beijing home after seeing off her son at the airport with
her husband, daughter and granddaughter.
But she said Wang Dan was coughing badly and suffered
headaches.
Washington had pressed for the release ahead of the
presidential summit, in which human rights will be a top item on
the agenda.
"It's good news for Wang Dan as an individual, except that
once again it's a release conditional on exile," said Catherine
Baber, a Hong Kong-based researcher on China for Amnesty
International.
Baber said more than 2,000 people were in prison in China
for counter-revolutionary crimes — even though such crimes had
been struck from Chinese statute books.
"Sending political prisoners to other countries does not
mean human rights conditions in China have improved. It's only a
change of strategy," said Han Dongfang, a Chinese labor
activist who lives in exile in Hong Kong.
"As a responsible citizen, if you want to criticize China,
you only have two choices: either you are sent to jail or you
have to leave the country," Han said.
The Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and
Democratic Movement said in a statement: "Wang Dan was used as
a hostage to be released ahead of Clinton's visit."