3rd Tiananmen Dissident Given Early Release

BEIJING — China has freed a veteran dissident two years before the end of his 13-year prison term for organizing a labor union during the Tiananmen Square democracy movement, a rights group and an official said Wednesday.

Zhang Jingsheng was at least the third political activist arrested in the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown to be given early release in the last two months.

The Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said Beijing may have freed Zhang, 47, to counter U.S. labor unions’ lobbying campaign in Congress against permanent, normal U.S.-Chinese trade relations.

Hunan province’s No. 1 prison, in Yuanjiang city, reduced Zhang’s sentence by two years and released him Tuesday, a prison official said.

Zhang had joined protests in Hunan province that were inspired by the demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. He made speeches in Changsha, the provincial capital, and advised workers setting up a union. After the June 4, 1989, military assault that ended the Beijing protests, Zhang urged resistance to the crackdown.

Last Thursday, Hunan authorities freed another labor organizer, Li Wangyang, two years early.

In April, authorities in Shandong province freed Chen Lantao, another dissident, 11 years into an 18-year sentence.