What is remarkable about Han Dongfang is not that the prison authorities jammed a needle through his hand or that they infected him with tuberculosis, but that he talks about his experience and risks it all over again.
A tall, mild-mannered man, less imposing than the plainclothes police officers who tail him every time he steps from his home, Han is the Chinese government`s worst nightmare: a man who is less afraid of it than it is of him.
An ordinary railway worker who never went to college, Han emerged from obscurity in the spring of 1989 to become the head of the workers` federation in the Tiananmen democracy movement, which the government violently crushed in June of that year.
He came to be known as China`s Lech Walesa, after the labor leader who led the drive to overthrow Communist rule in Poland.
Now out of prison for less than a year-he was released only because he was so sick that the authorities were afraid he would die in their custody-Han has been ordered not to see foreigners or to discuss his prison experiences. But in interviews in his room, he recounted his ordeal in forceful tones, so the bugs could pick it up.
”Sure, there`ll be plenty of misery ahead, but that`s OK,” he said nonchalantly. ”It`s bearable.”
The openness is part of a new role that Han is taking on.
Under the nose of the authorities, he is trying to create an independent labor movement to press for democracy in China. Only a few others in the nation dare to criticize the government so publicly, and he is the only one trying to organize a new democracy movement openly.
For the last 100 years, university students have been the vanguard of social movements in China, but their power is limited because they are on the periphery of society and account for less than one-fifth of 1 percent of the population.
Disgruntled workers, if organized, could strike and pressure the government more effectively.
The speeches of Deng Xiaoping, the paramount Chinese leader, suggest a horror of the Polish experience-urban workers rising up against the government-and the authorities have generally treated labor organizers far more harshly than student democracy leaders.
Mobilizing China`s workers to achieve democracy is a daunting challenge for a 28-year-old man with little money, no fax machine, no telephone and, he said with embarrassment, not enough cups to serve tea to visitors in his apartment. Next month he may have even less, for the authorities are threatening to evict him.
While he may lack teacups, there is no question that Han has the obstinacy to take on the government. When he was in prison, gravely ill but denied medical attention, he announced in late 1989 that he was going on a hunger strike until the authorities gave him a date when they would take him to a hospital for a checkup.
The warden responded, Han said, by having prisoners hold him down and force-feed him. A prison paramedic forced a rubber tube up Han`s nose.
As Han recounted the incident, the aim was mainly to cause as much pain as possible so that he would drop his demands.
The paramedic jammed the tube farther and farther up his nose until about a foot of tubing had disappeared, but it never wound down the esophagus. Instead, it tangled somewhere inside Han`s nose and mouth.
The paramedic attached the pump, and liquid shot into the pipe. Han said his head felt as if it were exploding, and he began to choke.
When he emerged from delirium 10 hours later, he refused to drop his hunger strike. Then came a moment of triumph that he would savor in his darkest hours.
”OK,” Han reports the warden as saying. ”We`ll take you to the doctor in a week.”
Han has recovered physically for the most part, and last month he applied for permission to hold a one-man demonstration, passing out leaflets demanding workers` rights and independent labor unions. The government of course denied permission.
For now, Han is virtually a voice in the wilderness, and few Chinese have heard of him-or of any other dissident. But the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement was nurtured in part by a few such voices, which emboldened others. And Han has a message and a huge potential audience.
