Translated from report by CHRD, published: March 8, 2016 and updated on March 9
(China Change exclusive: Guo Feixiong attending a citizen meeting in Beijing on July 28, 2012, with Dr. Xu Zhiyong, who has been serving a four-year sentence since July 2013 for leading the New Citizens Movement, in the audience. Video recorded by Xiao Guozhen, subtitle by @WLYeung and @awfan.)
On Friday March 4 we received news that Guo Feixiong, the renowned human rights leader who was wrongfully sentenced to six years last November, had on February 22 been sent to the remote the Yangchun Prison in Guangdong (广东阳春监狱) to serve his sentence. On February 29 his older sister, Yang Maoping (杨茂平), went to see him in prison, and found that his physical condition had deteriorated substantially. He looked emaciated and had lost nearly half of his weight.
Yang Maoping said: “I saw Maodong [Guo Feixiong’s legal name] on the afternoon of February 29, bringing a letter from his daughter Xixi, and news of his son Jinbao having recently won an award. Because we only had half an hour, we were very rushed. He said that he’d arrived at the jail on February 21. If they didn’t let him read books he would go on a hunger strike. He said his case is an injustice, and if he wasn’t granted access to a lawyer he would also protest.”
Guo Feixiong told his sister that “there are over a dozen people in the cell, there are no surveillance cameras, and it’s extremely noisy. The people cooking food in the morning shuffle back and forth outside the cell, and I can only sleep three hours a night.”
She added that he looked much worse than he did during a previous period of captivity, in the Tianhe Detention Center. “His face was pallid, he body thin, and his eyelids drooping. He said that there is something seriously wrong with his health, and that on February 22 he was unable to get up after sitting down, on three occasions.”
His sister pleaded that he cease the hunger strike for the sake of his health. “I thought he looked about three-fifths of his regular weight, and I’m not exaggerating. When I arrived this time he was already sitting. Earlier, in the courtroom, when I saw him walking it didn’t look normal. So I suspect that he’s suffered a spinal injury. As we spoke, a commissar in the political division of the prison was there, watching us the whole time.”
“Yang Maodong’s protesting by hunger strike is really dangerous,” she said. “The person from the political division of the jail said that he has to do labor during his sentence. I responded: ‘Yang Maodong’s health is already ruined. He can’t work. If you don’t believe it, go and perform an MRI on his back. I can pay for it.’”
The other concern is that there’s no surveillance camera in his cell. Guo Feixiong was beaten in Meizhou Prison in Guangdong when serving a five-year sentence from 2006-2011, and the continued absence of any monitoring means he could again be subject to violence, perpetrated by other prisoners, at the order of guards. “I might lose my life here,” he told his sister, “I won’t be a suicide.”
Guo Feixiong has been imprisoned and tortured by the authorities on numerous occasions. On August 8, 2013 he was locked in the Tianhe detention center in Guangzhou and not allowed a day of fresh air for over two and a half years. Many of his supporters were infuriated by this treatment, but multiple attempts by lawyers to lodge complaints about this abuse were rejected. Lawyers believe that this is the most severe, vile, and blatant attack on human rights during a time of peace. Article 25 of China’s own “Regulations on Detention Centers” clearly stipulated: “Criminals should be given between 1-2 hours of activity time outdoors per day.”
In December 2007, when Guo Feixiong was sent to the Meizhou Prison, he was also subject to cruel torture. When the prison guards forced him to crouch on the ground with his hands behind his head, and he refused, they called another detainee over and directed him to beat Guo. This inmate kicked Guo down a flight of stairs, then kept beating him as Guo rolled around on the ground trying to dodge the blows. This continued until the rest of the roughly 200 other detainees began making a hissing sound in disapproval, upon which time one of the jail administrators appeared and told the assailant to cease, lest Guo be killed.
Statement by Zhang Lei, Guo Feixiong’s defense counsel
Zhang Lei, Guo Feixiong’s defense lawyer, said in a statement to the Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group on March 9: “After Yang Maoping (Guo Feixiong’s older sister) saw Guo in prison, she explained to me his situation. Guo told her that there’s no surveillance camera in his cell, so he is extremely anxious about his personal safety and feels highly insecure. Prisons in China are an extremely complex place, in a way that’s difficult for outsiders to imagine. Normally there is always a camera set up in every cell, monitoring it 24 hours a day. Then, if anything happens, the recording can be checked. If every other cell is being monitored, and his isn’t, then he’s worried that he’s exposed to assault and attack, and that if anything were to happen, there would be no way to know. Firstly, the jailers wouldn’t know, and secondly, in his words ‘if I died, no one would even know how it happened.'”
The human rights community is concerned with Guo Feixiong’s condition, and will continue following the news and make his case known to the outside world.
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Related:
Chinese Rights Advocate Known as Guo Feixiong Convicted of Unexpected New Charge, November 27, 2015.
Prominent Dissident Makes a Criminal Complaint Against Three Judges in Guangdong, January 8, 2016.
Activist Guo Feixiong Held 743 Days Without Yard Time, August 21, 2015.
To Obama: Why China Does Not Have a Nelson Mandela, September 23, 2015.
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