China's democracy movement mutates into rights crusade

BEIJING, June 3 (Reuters) Key figures of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests may have been silenced at home or forced into exile abroad, but voices for reform in China are anything but silent.

Almost two decades after troops and tanks crushed the student-led demonstrations, the country's democracy movement has mutated into a crusade involving a new generation of civil rights campaigners who have taken up the cudgels for the downtrodden.

''In the 1990s, the democracy movement paid attention mainly to June 4,'' said veteran dissident Liu Xiaobo, referring to calls for the political rehabilitation of protesters killed or wounded in the crackdown on June 3-4, 1989.

''After 2000, thanks to the Internet, the popular opposition movement evolved to one where the focus varied from protecting the rights of grassroots groups to the environment, demolition and relocation of homes as well as AIDS,'' said Liu, who staged a hunger strike days before the massacre in support of protesters.

Despite a growing number of people waking up to their rights and almost daily protests nationwide, the Communist Party appears ready to crush threats, real or imagined, to its hold on power.

''Colour revolutions are unlikely in the next five years,'' Liu said, referring to popular protests which toppled dictatorships in post-Soviet Georgia and Ukraine in recent years.

The Communist Party, keen to find viable checks and balances to curb corruption, may flirt with limited political reform at its 17th Congress later this year but it is not about to embrace Western-style democracy, analysts said.

The Party, which has monopolised politics in the world's most populous nation since the 1949 revolution, has tightened its hold over the media, the Internet, non-governmental organisations, human rights lawyers, academics and dissidents in recent years.

Blind activist Chen Guangcheng, a self-taught ''barefoot lawyer'' who provided legal advice to peasants, was jailed last year after exposing forced late-term abortions and other coercive birth control measures in his native Shandong province.

AIDS and environmental activist Hu Jia and his wife, Zeng Jinyan, recently named by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people, were accused of endangering national security and barred from leaving the country in May.

''The campaign to defend (people's) rights is part of the democracy movement,'' said Chen Ziming, branded a ''black hand'' mastermind of the 1989 protests and jailed for 13 years.

In a rare display of official tolerance, Chen and Ren Wanding, a Tiananmen-era dissident jailed twice for a total of 11 years for his activism, were allowed to visit Hong Kong in April.

Ren, who visited Hong Kong for a health check, speculated that Beijing granted him rare permission to travel to the former British colony as part of a relaxation in the political atmosphere in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Some analysts said a confident government gave its blessings to the pair's Hong Kong trip because no untoward incident has been reported since the 2005 death of Zhao Ziyang, who was toppled as Communist Party chief for opposing the massacre.

Zhao's one-time top aide, Bao Tong, who remains a thorn in the government's side, lives under tight surveillance.

Several Tiananmen-era student leaders are living in exile in the United States. The Tiananmen Mothers, a group composed of survivors and relatives of victims, have neither forgiven nor forgotten, petitioning the government annually.

Nonetheless, the populace has gained greater freedoms - ranging from what they wear and eat to where they live, work and travel - in the past three decades.

Many middle-class people have become indifferent to calls for democracy as they rush to enrich themselves.

''In 1989, we worked to buy a TV and a refrigerator,'' a Party member said, requesting anonymity. ''Today, we work to buy an apartment and a car ... People rarely talk about June 4 these days.'' REUTERS RN KP0837