Dear Mrs. Madeleine Korbel Albright,
         Mr. Kofi A. Annan,
        Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton,

One of China's most prominent democracy activists, his associate and as many as 13 other dissidents were reported detained or missing (Oct. 27, 1998) in a police crackdown just weeks after China signed a key human rights treaty.

Police took veteran campaigner Xu Wenli away from his Beijing home yesterday morning (Oct. 27, 1998), blocking his plan to set off on a cross-country trip to protest the harassment of another dissident, Xu's wife said.

With many other dissidents exiled abroad; Xu 56, is one of the most prominent democracy campaigners left in China. Xu was jailed after the democracy wall protest movement of the late 1970s and free in 1993, having served all but three years of a 15-year sentence, much of it in solitary confinement.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Tang Guoqiang, said he was unaware of the detentions, but he said China signed the U.N. pact on civil and political rights to safeguard citizens' rights, and remained determined to do so.

The wife of Xu, a veteran of the 1978-79 democracy wall movement, said police have tried to talk Xu into dropping plan to go to Shandong. Police seized Xu's fax machine, computer, books magazines and other documents after a two hour search through his belongings. Officers were rude and did not say why Xu was being detained or where they were taking him.

They were extremely rude. The acted like gangsters Xu's wife told Reuters, police "turned our house upside down like they were sweeping for mines" she said.

Unfortunately; we haven't to see the action of international covenant on civil and political rights, a key U.N. protocol guaranteeing freedom from arbitrary arrest, the right to assembly and free speech .

On the hand, how to make the "democratic movement" working, is our urgently duty.

We need your help.