Detained China Rights Lawyer Guo Feixiong Hunger Strike For Nearly 80 Days

Reporters Without Borders, 27 February 2008-

Reporters Without Borders is extremely worried about the health of detained cyber-dissident and human rights lawyer Yang Maodong, who has been on hunger strike in Meizhou prison (in the province of Guangdong) for the past 11 weeks. Better known by the online pseudonym of Guo Feixiong, Yang stopped eating on 13 December.

“This is the second hunger strike that Yang has undertaken in a year and this time he has not eaten for almost 80 days,” the press freedom organisation said. “Every day he is given injections that supply a quarter of his daily energy needs and he is continuing to drink liquids, but his state of health is alarming. We urge the authorities to let him be examined by a doctor at once and we reiterate our call for his release.”

His wife, Zhang Qing, today told Reporters Without Borders about the “physical mistreatment, including electric shocks” to which he has been subjected since his arrest a year and a half ago and the “traces of torture, five or six scars.” She said she is now staging a 24-hour hunger strike each week in solidarity with her husband and to “denounce the state’s inhuman and legally inadmissible behaviour” towards him.

The authorities are treating Yang with increased harshness and Yang was denied access to the prison when she went to visit him on 22 January. She was able to see him in the courtyard from outside the prison. As soon as he saw her, the guards surrounding him put a hood over his head. Zhang said he seemed to be “very weak” and “seriously handicapped by the poor state of his pelvis.”

A writer and human rights activist, Yang, 41, was arrested for “disturbing the peace” after organising a rally in the village of Taishi on 13 September 2006. The authorities claimed that he “personally led demonstrations by villagers with the aim of overthrowing the local officials.”

He was sentenced in November 2007 to five years in prison and a fine of 40,000 yuan (4,000 euros). In order to begin collecting this sum, the authorities froze the couple’s bank account on 18 December and withdrew 7,260 yuan.

- Original report from Reporters Without Borders: Detained cyber-dissident has been on hunger strike for nearly 80 days

Diplomats asked to intercede on behalf of detained China cyber-dissident

Reporters Without Borders, 9 October 2006-

Reporters Without Borders today urged foreign diplomats based in Beijing to raise the case of cyber-dissident Yang Maodong with the Chinese authorities as he has been the victim of mistreatment since his arrest on 14 September. Yang is better known by his pseudonym, Guo Feixiong.

“Yang’s arrest brings the number of cyber-dissidents detained in China to 50,” the press freedom organisation said. “We are dismayed by the attempts of the Chinese police to break the will of government opponents by all means possible. This inhumane treatment carried out in a completely illegal manner is a disgrace of the Chinese judicial system.”

According to his lawyers, Yang has been interrogated for up to 11 hours a day and constantly threatened and insulted. The police also reportedly prevented him for sleeping for seven days and nights in a row. He went on hunger strike as soon as he was arrested. After two weeks, the authorities began feeding him intravenously by force. Despite the mistreatment, he is still refusing to cooperate with the police.

A lawyer, writer and human rights activist who lives in Guangzhou in the southern province of Guangdong, Yang has been charged with “illegal business activities.” According to his lawyers, he faces up to five years in prison or even more if his case is deemed to be “serious.” No date has yet been set for his trial.

Yang was previously imprisoned from October to December last year for “disturbing the peace” after encouraging the population of the village of Taishi (in Guangdong province) to demand the resignation of the village chief for alleged corruption. He was briefly arrested again early this year after going on hunger strike in protest against the beating he had received from thugs in Guangzhou.

China Detains Top Guangdong Rights Lawyer Guo Feixiong (cont’d)

Radio Free Asia, 2006.09.15- (cont’d)

Moral authority

“There are still a lot of people downstairs [watching me],” Guo told “Different Voices” host Jill Ku. “But I haven’t been out for a month or more because I’ve been publicizing the arrest of Gao Zhisheng to the outside world. I don’t care what they do.”

“They can’t do anything against us legally because we haven’t put a foot wrong. They are reduced to using violence, like the mafia, against us,” he said, adding that he expected worse still to come.

“The aim of the civil rights movement is to protect the legal rights of citizens, of the individual, so that China will progress towards a society under the rule of law. The reaction of the authoritarian regime against the civil rights movement has been ferocious. Given that this is their attitude I think it can only get worse for civil rights activists from now on,” he said.

He said civil rights activists who engaged with the authorities within the law had a powerful effect on the system, however.

“It’s really got to the point where I would welcome the opportunity to do four or five years in jail now, so that I could exert some moral force through my non-cooperation with the authorities,” Guo said.

Taishi village connection

Asked if he had any messages for his friends and fellow activists, he repeated the words to said to his wife shortly before being taken away Thursday.

“I would tell them to stay calm,” he said.

“This is going to be a very testing time for the civil rights movement, and not to fear the authoritarian regime. But there is a limit, even to their power.”

Gao lost his law license after he criticized the government for its treatment of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.

He also began a rolling hunger strike earlier in the year to protest the ill-treatment of lawyers and rights activists at the hands of police and local government officials.

The protest began in reaction to the beating of Guo Feixiong. Guo was a close associate of Gao, and both lawyers had worked on a number of sensitive cases, including the Taishi village standoff. (END)

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China Detains Top Guangdong Rights Lawyer Guo Feixiong

Radio Free Asia, 2006.09.15-

HONG KONG—Authorities in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou have detained prominent civil rights lawyer Guo Feixiong on suspicion of “running an illegal business.”

Guo, who is also known as Yang Maodong, was taken from his home at 9 a.m. Thursday by plainclothes officers and is being held at the Guangzhou No.1 Detention Center, his wife said Friday. (Guo Feixiong, left, photo from The epoch Times)

“Yesterday morning as I was taking our son to kindergarten,” Guo’s wife Zhang Qing told RFA’s Mandarin service. “I had just arrived at the gate when I was detained by a big chap who grabbed me by both arms and pulled me onto a minivan. He said he was from the Public Security Bureau.”

She had been driven to see her husband, who told her to stay calm. Then he was taken away, and Zhang was handed a search warrant for her home and a document saying that Guo was being held under “criminal detention,” she said.

‘Stay calm’

Police took away three computers, handwritten papers and notebooks, and a cellphone, said Zhang, who was herself questioned for several hours at the local police station.

Guo first came to media attention as part of the legal team helping the villagers of Taishi, Guangdong province, to prepare a recall case against their elected village chief amid allegations of corruption during a land deal.

No stranger to police harassment, Guo was detained, formally arrested, then released without charge late last year.

He has also reported severe beatings at the hands of the police following the bitter and long-running dispute, during which he served as a member of Beijing-based lawyer Gao Zhisheng’s law firm.

Gao was detained Aug. 15 while on a family visit to Dongying city in the eastern province of Shandong. His wife and child have been incommunicado ever since, and Guo has said he fears they are being held under house arrest.

In an interview broadcast by RFA’s Mandarin service on Sept. 12, Guo appeared to anticipate further trouble as a result of his continued civil rights work, which included a lawsuit against police for at least one of the beatings. (to be cont’d…)

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