We just walked in to the US embassy

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/09/just-walked-into-the-embassy

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In your report (US academic barred from China after speaking out over detained scholar, 7 July), Tania Branigan writes that I "smuggled a famed dissident into the US embassy during the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests of 1989" and for many years have been "banned from visiting" China. The ban is true enough but I must object stoutly to the word "smuggled".

I accompanied Fang Lizhi and Li Shuxian when they entered the United States embassy on 5 June 1989, the day after the Beijing massacre. There is nothing in Chinese law, US law, or any law that prohibits a Chinese citizen from walking into an American embassy or prohibits an American citizen from accompanying them.

Use of the word smuggled, which suggests a crime, hands way too much legitimacy to a regime that wants the preferences of authoritarians to count as law.Perry LinkTaipei, Taiwan