But there are risks. There are very grave risks.' He shifted to the edge of the seat and leaned his elbows on his knees, his small pale hands hanging loose; the light glinted across his glasses as he turned his head sometimes to look at us, though mostly he looked down. He didn't have the air of a renegade storming the barricades, but that was obviously what he was going to do, and as I watched his face, hollowed by fatigue, I felt something that doesn't often get through the scaly carapace of suspicion and distrust that forms around us in this dirty trade. It was compassion.

'In one sense,' Qiao said, 'the recent uprising is already causing more anguish than the one in June 1989, when the reaction by the government was confused and at first indecisive, and when the ensuing bloodshed evoked, at least, the attention and the sympathy of the rest of the world.' His head was lowered now and there was an edge to his tone that cut through the silence when he spoke again. 'This time there was immediate reaction by the government; there was almost no media coverage of the event; there was almost no bloodshed, since the security forces were quick to move in; and very little news has leaked out from Beijing. Let me tell you, gentlemen, that this new uprising has in effect proved an infinitely greater tragedy than the last one, since most of the participants were intellectuals of high standing, with more chance and more hope than before of combating and ousting the government, only to see that hope shattered within days. And instead of visible bloodshed in the streets, we have a secret and most sinister operation under way that is bringing the intellectual elite from their homes in the thick of the night, torn from their families and thrown into the torture chambers and finally to the execution squads of this merciless regime and if you feel, gentlemen, that I am resorting to the idiom of cheap journalism' — his head swung up to look at us — 'in order to get your sympathy, it is not the case. These people, the most enlightened intellects behind science and industry and education, are indeed being taken from their homes and tortured and finally shot to death, as we sit here now. My brother is one of them.'