BY AL KAMEN
May 29 at 4:51 pm
BEIJING, CHINA – 1989/06/01: Watched by thousands of protestors, one of the pro-democracy movement leaders talks into a microphone as he gives a press conference in Tiananmen Square. Pro-democracy demonstrators filled the square for weeks prior to the final nighttime Communist Government’s bloody crackdown. Many camped out and slept in the square to keep the movement going.. (Photo by Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Next month marks the 25th anniversary of the pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. (Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images)
A bipartisan group of House members — including Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali.) — has called on Mayor Vincent Gray and the D.C. Council to rename part of a Northwest Washington street that runs by the Chinese Embassy in honor of imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
The lawmakers said renaming part of International Place NW after Liu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, would bring “renewed international attention to Chinese human rights violations.” The precedent for the move was the renaming of a street in front of the Soviet embassy in Washington for anti-Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.
“June 4 will mark the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre,” the 13 House members said in a letter obtained by the Loop, and “egregious Chinese human rights violations are regrettably as much a reality” now as they were then.
“In light of these realities,” the letter said, “we write to seek your partnership in bringing renewed international attention to Chinese Human Rights violations.”
The letter was also signed by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), Christopher Smith (R-N.J.), Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) , James McGovern (D-Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.); Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.), Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.), Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.) and Robert Pittenger (R-N.C.).
From :http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in-the-loop/wp/2014/05/29/house-members-urge-d-c-to-name-street-for-imprisoned-chinese-dissident/