Ding Zilin

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Professor Ding Zilin (Chinese: 丁子霖; born December 20, 1936 or January 1, 1939^[1]) is currently the leader of the Tiananmen Mothers. Her seventeen-year-old son, Jiang Jielian, (蔣捷連) was killed by the People's Liberation Army in the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre on the night of June 3 of 1989.

Ever since that day, she and a few others who lost sons and daughters during the 1989 Tiananmen massacre have been asking the government to apologize. They are sometimes also called Tiananmen Mothers. She and others have faced imprisonment, house-arrest, phone-tapping and constant surveillance. She has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts.

In 2006, she and the other Tiananmen Mothers were put under house arrest shortly before the anniversary of the massacre to prevent them from holding any public memorial or protest.^[2] In the same year, Time magazine selected her as one of the 60 Asian heroes. [1]

She has been collecting the names of the those who were shot dead by the People's Liberation Army in Beijing around June 4, 1989. At the end of June of 2006, she was able to confirm 186 deaths.^[3]

In February 8 of 2007, she won the Vasyl Stus Award for her book "Looking for the June 4 victims".

[edit] See also

• Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989
• Human Rights in China
• Political dissident
• List of Chinese dissidents

[edit] References

1. ^ The birthdate of Ding provided by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China is January 1, 1939. Ding Zilin said in a telephone interview on October 9, 2006 that she was born in Shanghai on December 20, 1936.
2. ^ Fifteenth Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre
3. ^ List of the confirmed Deaths in Chinese

[edit] External links

• Alliance Introduction
• Ding Zilin's biography for her 2003 Nobel Peace Prize Nomination
• Time magazine 60 years of Asian Heros
• Ding Zilin: an advocate for the dead from CNN
• 独立笔会自由写作奖在国际笔会香港会议上颁发