China Releases Prominent Dissident - Part I

China has released prominent dissident Fang Jue from detention and expelled him to the United States, a human rights group announced Saturday.

Fang was put aboard a United Airlines flight to Chicago on Friday afternoon, New York-based Human Rights in China said. It said he was allowed to contact his family after he was aboard the plane.

A businessman and former government official who had appealed for political and economic reform, Fang was detained in November in what activists said appeared to be a crackdown aimed at stifling dissent before a major Communist meeting.

Fang’s release came one month after leading pro-democracy activist Xu Wenli was also expelled to the United States.

Fang is best known for a statement issued in 1998 that called for direct elections at all levels of government, freedom of the press and independent labor unions.

The former economic planning official said many younger government officials supported his views.

Fang was arrested later in 1998 and sentenced the next year to four year in prison on charges of conducting illegal business deals. He was released earlier this year.

“We’ve been objecting for some time to the deplorable way the Chinese government has been harassing Fang Jue, and of course we’re glad he’s been released from his secret detention,” Liu Qing, president of Human Rights in China, said in a prepared statement.

“But we’re very disappointed that once again the Chinese government has decided that it can only deal with a dissident by ejecting him from his homeland to a life in exile.”