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BEIJING, Feb 18 (Reuters) - A group of 13 Chinese academics and editors have written to President Hu Jintao and other Communist leaders, joining a chorus of protest against a decision by censors to demote the top two editors of a progressive weekly.

Propaganda mandarins offered on Thursday to resurrect Freezing Point on March 1, five weeks after closing it for publishing an essay by historian Yuan Weishi criticising what he called dangerous nationalist distortions in history textbooks.

But censors shunted aside the two editors who had made the weekly section of the China Youth Daily a standard-bearer for combative journalism by exposing official corruption and misrule. Editor Li Datong and deputy editor Lu Yuegang were relegated to the news research office of the newspaper, mouthpiece of the Communist Party's youth wing.

In an open letter to the Party's supreme, nine-member Politburo Standing Committee headed by President Hu, the academics and editors described the closure and demotions as "illegal, unwise, depriving citizens of their most fundamental right to free speech and constitutional right to press freedom".

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