Three members of Congress called on President Bush yesterday to press for the release of Yang Jianli—a Harvard graduate who has been detained in China for almost six months—when Bush meets with Chinese President Jiang Zemin next week.

“I ask President Bush to do everything in his power to help my husband,” Christin X. Fu, Yang’s wife and a researcher at Harvard Medical School (HMS), said at the one hour press conference in Washington. “Please do not forget terrorism is bred where there is no respect for human rights, no democracy, freedom and rule of law.”

Yang, a U.S. permanent resident who earned a doctorate from the Kennedy School of Government, was detained in the Chinese city of Kunming on April 26. He had been banned from China following his involvement in the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.

Fu said she hoped the event—at which Rep. Barney Frank ’61 (D-Mass.), Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) and Rep. Michael A. Capuano (D-Mass.) spoke—would raise awareness of Yang’s case and put pressure on the administration to push the Chinese on the issue.

“We hope that President Bush will raise Dr. Yang’s case directly with President Jiang,” Cox said at the press conference.

Jiang will arrive in the United States next week and is scheduled to meet with Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas on Thursday.

Yang’s supporters see Jiang’s visit as their best—and perhaps only—chance at winning Yang’s release.

“It is understood that as part of the run-up to the meeting and in the aftermath, political prisoners will be released,” James V. Feinerman, a professor of Asian legal studies at Georgetown and speaker at the press conference, said in a phone interview from his office.

Yesterday, China released Ngawang Sangdrol, a Tibetan nun who had been imprisoned by Chinese authorities since 1992 for political activities.

The speakers at yesterday’s press conference said they hope Yang’s release will be next.

“The Chinese need to let this man go home,” Frank told The Crimson. “He wasn’t trying to do anything bad. He wasn’t doing anything that wouldn’t be perfectly fine in a well-run country.”

A number of high-ranking officials have already been pressing Yang’s case.

Both U.S. Ambassador to China Clark T. Randt and Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Lorne W. Craner have discussed Yang’s status with senior Chinese officials.

“We have raised this case almost weekly since his detention,” said Jeffrey Jamison, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

The U.S. government is pressing harder on Yang’s case than for the case of a number of other political prisoners, according to a State Department official who asked not to be named.