Beatings of Chinese political dissidents continue

Wu Xuewei, husband of Shanghai petitioner Mao Hengfeng, told Human Rights in China (HRIC) that Mao has been suffering serious physical abuse in the Anhui Provincial Women’s Reeducation-Through-Labor (RTL) Camp, where Mao is serving an 18-month sentence.

According to HRIC, Wu stated that Mao told him during a brief meeting at the camp on July 21 that the abuses include: frequent beatings carried out by inmates who were encouraged and directed by camp police officers; being hit on the head by a chair twice; being lifted and pulled by her arms and legs and thrown repeatedly against the floor; not being allowed to go to the bathroom or bathe.

In a report by HRIC, it was In March 2010, that Mao was ordered by Shanghai authorities to serve one-and-a-half years of RTL for "disturbing social order" by shouting slogans outside a Beijing Court. She began serving in the Shanghai Women’s RTL Camp, but was transferred to Anhui on April 27, 2010, more than 600 kilometers from Shanghai.

Mao began petitioning in 1988 after being fired from her job for refusing to abort a second pregnancy. For her petition activies, she has been forced into psychiatric hospitals by the authorities many times, and suffered many types of abuse and torture while imprisoned in the Shanghai Women’s Prison.

The Chinese original of Wu Xuewei’s description of the mistreatment of Mao is available at: http://gb.hrichina.org/public/contents/19995.