Protesters Slam Continued Detention Of Wine Makers

A group of protesters demonstrated outside the Beijing's liaison office in Western, calling for the release of four people who were detained in Chengdu three years ago over the sale of a Chinese wine that commemorated the Tiananmen crackdown.

The activists of Alliance in Support of Patriotic Movements of China said the four have been in jail since 2016 and even their lawyers and family are not allowed to contact them.

The four made a wine called Eight Liquor Six Four, referring to the bloody crackdown of protesting students on June 4, 1989, and the bottles had an image that resembled the famous "Tank Man" photo that emerged during that tumultuous time.

The men sold this homemade local "baiiju" wine online – for 89.64 yuan – and were detained in May 2016.

The alliance said one of the men – Fu Hailu – was supposed to go on trial on Friday. But the official cancelled it two days ago without giving any reason.

"These four people are now like, detained without any end in sight," said the alliance's vice chairwoman Chow Hang-tung.

Chow said since this year the lawyers have not been able to see them as police told them they don't represent the detainees any more.

"In China, the current law is the family members are not allowed to see a person who is not sentenced yet. So the family members have never seen them. All the news they can get is from people who have been released from the detention centre," she said.

Chow told RTHK's Joanne Wong that the alliance is planning to holding a beer brewing event to honour the four detainees during the June 4 commemorations this year.

The protesters also displayed a bottle of the wine the detainees made, saying it was the only bottle in the SAR.

It was reported earlier that after the four were detained, authorities seized most of their wine. But one of the bottles, the reports said, was smuggled to the Middle East and from there to Washington before it made its way to Hong Kong in 2017.