Geneva: The UN human rights chief Navi Pillay on Tuesday called on China to release dozens of activists detained ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on democracy protests.
“I urge the Chinese authorities to immediately release those detained for the exercise of their human right to freedom of expression,” Ms Pillay said in a statement.
Dozens of individuals, among them human rights campaigners, lawyers and journalists are believed to have been detained as Wednesday's anniversary of the June 4, 1989, looms.
Several were reportedly charged with “creating a disturbance” because they took part in a private discussion about the events of 1989, which remain highly sensitive for China's communist regime.
China forbids public discussion of what happened in 1989 when the military brutally suppressed pro-democracy protesters, mainly students, who had staged a mass sit-in on Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.
Troops killed hundreds of unarmed civilians by some estimates more than 1,000 persons to quell the uprising.
