UK police raid home of Tiananmen Square survivor following peaceful protest in London

The arrival of Chinese president Xi Jinping in the UK this week only served to further arouse suspicions of sordid relations between China and Britain when UK police forcefully arrested Tiananmen Square survivor Shao Jiang for protesting peacefully outside Xi's welcome reception in London's Mansion House. Jiang was arrested, detained, and subsequently had his family's home raided for blocking President Xi's motorcade in the London streets while holding two signs reading "End autocracy" and "Democracy now." Due to the nature of the arrest, many suspect that this is a further example of Britain acquiescing to Chinese demands in order to keep business relations strong; these trade relations come at the expense, protesters say, of exploited Chinese workers who are unable to rally for better working conditions under China's government.

Two British-Tibetan women were also arrested for waving Tibetan flags along the motorcade's route; Tibet has long been a sore subject for the Chinese government, who invaded the country in the '50s and has held it tightly ever since despite Tibetan pleas for freedom. Witnesses say that the police originally did not intend to arrest the women, but that they later received orders to the contrary.

Human rights groups are accusing Britain of "trading away" human rights to better Chinese-British relations, and many groups in Britain were shocked by the strange arrests and raids.

Shao Jiang, who watched his fellow student protesters be massacred in Beijing in 1989 during the Tiananmen Square incident, was released on bail Wednesday along with the two Tibetan women. Jiang was a member of the small, revolutionary first group of students in Beijing who initially drafted the demands of the protest which gave way to the massacre. He was arrested following Tiananmen Square and spent over a year being "questioned" in a Chinese prison before fleeing the country. His wife told reporters that the arrest and the raid felt very similar to what they experienced during their tumultuous years in China.

Samantha Johnson