Chinese Activist is sent Back to Forced Labor Camps for Protesting One-Child Policy

By Irving Feng
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

SHANGHAI, China – Chinese activist, Mao Hengfeng, was sent to a forced labor camp for holding demonstrations against China’s one-child policy.

Mao Hengfeng protests China’s one-child policy. (Photo courtesy of Reuters)

This will be the third time Mao Hengfeng has been sent back to the forced labor camps for her dissident views regarding China’s one-child policy which limits the number of children a family is allowed to have any forces abortions on women that violate their national policies.  From 2004 to 2005, she served a year and a half in a re-education program which utilized forced labor to aid in her rehabilitation after she refused to abort her third child after giving birth to twins.

Mao was also dismissed from her job at a soap factory and detained in a psychiatric hospital for mental health evaluations prior to her first stint at a re-education forced labor camp.  Shortly after her first stint at the re-education program, she was imprisoned for two and a half years from 2006 to 2008.

Then, again in 2008, Mao was sent back to the re-education labor camps when she supported Liu Xiaobo, an activist who called for the end of China’s single party rule.  She was released in February of 2011 from forced labor and placed under house arrest in her home in Shanghai.  Mao was then abducted once more and placed in a prison hospital where she was mistreated and tortured.

Mao, in her most recent ordeal with Chinese officials, was abducted by security officers two months ago, in September.  She was protesting her most recent ill treatment and human rights abuses during her experience in the re-education labor camps.

Mao’s husband, Wu Xuewei, relayed to international media sources that he has not been allowed any contact with his wife since her arrest.  The 41 year old mother’s last whereabouts was presumably at the Yangpu district police detention center located in Shanghai.

Wu, Mao’s husband, attempted to call the Yangpu detention center to find out more information about his wife but the calls went unanswered.  He only recently received a letter from local authorities which said that Mao has been sentenced to the re-education labor camps once again under the charge of disturbing social order.

Wu says that the charges are baseless, and his wife is not guilty of committing any crimes or breaking any laws.  Wu further says that the offenses that his wife has been charged with are complete fabrications by the governmental officials who have detained her.

China’s Communist party has been rounding up demonstrators and dissidents prior to and during their regime change.  A new generation of Chinese leaders is currently being installed and a smooth transition and a stable centralized government is highly desired by the top level Communist officials.

For further information, please see:

Amnesty International – China: Women’s rights activist sentenced to labour camp – 6 November 2012

Reuters – Chinese women’s rights activist sent to labor camp again – 6 November 2012

RTT News – Chinese Woman Who Campaigned Against One-child Policy Sentenced To Labor Camp – 6 November 2012

The Washington Times – China hauls away activists in congress crackdown – 6 November 2012

Author: Impunity Watch Archive