Tong Yi, China’s best-known woman prisoner and secretary to Wei Jingsheng until Wei’s arrest in April 1994, was badly beaten by fellow inmates on 16 January 1995 and again on 17 January in the Hewan Re-education Camp near Wuhan in Hebei Province for demanding that her work day not exceed eight hours. She is serving […]
Tong Yi, China’s best-known woman prisoner and secretary to Wei
Jingsheng until Wei’s arrest in April 1994, was badly beaten by
fellow inmates on 16 January 1995 and again on 17 January in the
Hewan Re-education Camp near Wuhan in Hebei Province for
demanding that her work day not exceed eight hours. She is
serving an administrative sentence of “re-education through
labour,” imposed without trial on 22 December 1994 for being an
“accessory” to Wei. She had been transferred there on 9 January.
In a letter smuggled to her mother after the two incidents, Tong
Yi wrote, “My situation is very difficult — even dangerous.” She
went on to explain that on the afternoon of 16 January, she was
beaten on the face and body without provocation by two cell
mates, members of what prisoners call the “second government.”
Also known as “cell bosses” or “trustees,” these prisoners
collaborate with prison guards in the interests of keeping order.
Tong Yi immediately asked for protection, but the following day,
some ten people surrounded and beat her, stopping several times,
then starting again until her face and body were covered with
“bruises and scars.” According to her letter, inmates at the
prison knew that the attitude of officials at the re-education
center was such that she could be beaten with impunity. Tong Yi
went on to say that her first beating took place after she went
to the education and management sector (guan jiao ke) of the
re-education center to demand that her work day not exceed eight
hours as provided for in government regulations. She was told at
that point that the center “deals with its own affairs.” As Tong
Yi explained, there is a daily quota for the work she is doing,
ripping threads out of old cloth. For those with nimble fingers
or who are used to the work, the quota can usually be met by 10
pm, she said. Those who are new or slow often must work until two
or three in the morning and be up the next day by six. But, said
Tong Yi, “even if they beat me to death, I will work only eight
hours.” Tong Yi said that officials in Beijing had told her
during her interrogation that she would face this kind of
treatment. At that time they said, “We will not have the
slightest gentleness in our hearts to people like you or Wei
Jingsheng. This is the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
On 23 January, when Tong Yi’s mother came to deliver “Yunnan
White Medicine,” a healing salve, guards took the medication, but
did not permit her to see her daughter. Her mother had seen her
last on 15 January, but in violation of regulations, a guard
present during the visit recorded the entire conversation. In
addition, Tong Yi reported that the appeals she had been writing
to the procuracy to reverse her sentence have been stolen and
confiscated. In them, she complained that conditions in camp were
inhumane. For example, the ten prisoners in her cell sleep
communally on a wooden platform that is so tightly packed it is
impossible to turn over.
The United Nation’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, a body
set up by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, called
Chinese re-education “a coercive administrative measure whose
purpose is not only occupational rehabilitation, but mainly
political and cultural rehabilitation through self
criticism…where the deprivation of freedom is inherently
arbitrary in character.”
Recommended Action
Send appeals to Chinese officials:
safety can be guaranteed, pending her unconditional release
mother be allowed to visit her, in accordance with the U.N.
Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners and the
Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any
Form of Detention or Imprisonment
Yi’s beating be disciplined
Prisoners, adopted 29 December 1994, insists on the `dignity’ and
`personal safety’ of prisoners, principles ignored in Tong Yi’s –
untried administrative detention of the kind that Tong Yi is now
undergoing
Appeals To
His Excellency Li Peng
Prime Minister
Office of the Prime Minister
Guowuyuan 9, Xihuangchenggenbeijie
Beijing, People’s Republic of China
Fax: +861 467 7351 or +861 512 5810 (via Ministry of Foreign
Affairs)
His Excellency Jiang Zemin
General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party
Beijing, People’s Republic of China
Fax: +861 512 1176
