EXILED activist Han Dongfang apologised and dashed off to a nearby telephone in a Central coffee shop. 'Please excuse me for a minute.' Five minutes later, he returned and whispered in a low voice: 'I can't find Wang Hui, she is supposed to wait for my call. I hope [the police] haven't got to her.' Wang, wife of dissident lawyer Zhou Guoqiang, was in Heilongjiang this week to persuade the authorities to grant her husband leave from a labour camp to visit his dying mother.
Jailed two years ago for printing labour slogans on T-shirts, Zhou was reportedly in such poor health that he himself needed urgent medical attention.
The friendship between Han and Zhou dates back to 1989 when Han first got involved in the labour movement in China.
When the latter was detained after the crackdown on the student movement, Zhou fought fiercely for his release for 22 months until Han was kicked out of China in 1992. Now, Han wants to do the same for Zhou. When Han received his Bremen Solidarity Prize - a human rights award given by the German city every two years (previous winners include Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi) at the Bremen Town Hall on Friday night, he presented the city's Senate with a poem written by Zhou called Amber.
'I have always wanted to translate Zhou's poems into English so that more people will know about him,' said Han.
'That's why I chose to present this to Bremen.' The lives of Han and Zhou have long been intertwined.
