A teenager, rescued from China, performed a Bittersweet concert at Carnegie Hall earlier this month.
Courtesy: Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.
At thirteen, Anni Zhang is known as “China’s youngest prisoner of conscience.”
When she was ten, Anni was kidnapped out of her elementary school, detained overnight, denied the right to go to school and put under house arrest with her father. But much has changed. Last week, she played the piano at Carnegie Hall.
Unfortunately, what should have been a completely joyous occasion was marred. Her father, veteran activist Zhang Lin, was not able to attend because the Chinese government refused to issue him a passport.
Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers played a key role in bringing Anni to the United States from China. She and her husband, Robert, have been raising Anni as their own daughter.
When Anni came to the United States she didn’t know how to play the piano, but after just two years, she won an international competition to perform at Carnegie Hall.
Anni’s father, Zhang Lin, is a pro-democracy activist in China. He says that’s why he was denied a passport and why is daughter was removed from school.
Littlejohn asks, “What kind of government would detain a 10-year-old to punish her father, and then would refuse a passport to the father to punish them both?”
Jing Zhang, president of Women’s Rights in China and colleague of Zhang Lin said, “The Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of pro-democracy activists is unprecedented.