The intensive efforts to secure the release of activist Yang Jianli, who received a doctorate from the Kennedy School of Government and has been detained in China for more than a year, received the backing of the United Nations (U.N.) yesterday.

A committee of the U.N. Human Rights Commission ruled that China has violated international law by holding Yang for a prolonged period without a lawyer, a trial or any formal charges, according to an opinion made public yesterday.

Yang’s supporters said the announcement will lend credibility to their cause and aid in lobbying the Bush administration and foreign governments even if it is unlikely to lead directly to Yang’s release.

Yang was banned from China for his role as an organizer of the Tiananmen Square demonstration of 1989, and was arrested last year 10 days after he arrived in the country to research labor unrest.

Yang has not been heard from since he made calls to his wife and a reporter within 24 hours of his initial detention.

Yang’s wife, Harvard Medical School Researcher Christina X. Fu, and Jared Genser, a lawyer and classmate of Yang’s at the Kennedy School, have led the international campaign to advocate for Yang’s release.

Genser and Fu held a press conference in Washington today, joined by three members of Congress, to formally announce the U.N. decision and call for Yang’s release.

The campaign has attracted the attention and support of major political figures. The website for Freedom Now, the non-profit organization of which Genser is the president, lists the names of such prominent politicians as Massachusetts’ Democratic Senators John Kerry and Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy ’54-’56, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, and Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers.

House Resolution 199, which also calls for his release, is currently before the House International Relations Committee, Genser said, and has been signed by 43 members of Congress.

Genser said that the body which gave the opinion, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, aims for “discretion, objectivity, impartiality and independence.” France, Algeria, Paraguay, Hungary and Iran have representatives on the working group.

According to Genser, the group consists of some countries that “do not have, shall we say, the most prominent human rights record,” but he said that this may add credibility to the decision.

“It makes it more clear that it is not just the United States trying to impose its own views,” he said.

Genser said that since Yang was taken into custody on April 26, 2002, Chinese authorities have not provided information “to anyone on the outside.”

“It has now been almost 13 months and we have literally heard absolutely nothing,” he said.

Genser said he expects to use the U.N. decision to stir support for Yang’s case. The U.N. action will also help Yang’s supporters advocate for him with the U.S. and other governments, he said.