Wei Jingsheng

Wei Jingsheng shares his experience of the protests within the film and explains how China can become a democratic society. He also tells of how the student leaders were sometimes doing things the wrong way and how the years of imprisonment have helped him rethink and thoroughly understand what he had done.
Wei was transferred to a labour camp in Qinghai where he protested about the conditions of his imprisonment and achieved some improvements such as access to books, magazines and newspapers and a colour television set. On the 14th od September, 1993, He was released from prison as a political gesture to persuade the International Olympic Committee to vote for China to host the 2000 Olympic Games. However, this action was useless and China lost to Australia. Wei is thrown into jail for another 14 years for trying to ‘overthrow the government’ on the 21st of November, 1995 and has his political rights taken for three years. During this imprisonment, Wei is awarded with the Olof Palm Prize for 1994, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Though and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Human Rights Award. In the winter of 1997, he is deported to the US with Wang Dan. During 1998, He founds the OCDC and is presented with the Democracy Award by the National Endowment for Democracy. Wei is referred to as the ‘Chinese Mandela’ and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize at least seven times since 1993. Nowadays, Wei continues to attempt to achieve human rights and democracy in China and is the chairman of the OCDC and the president of the Wei Jingsheng Foundation.