Additional details surface about the treatment of activists during China's annual parliamentary meeting. Chinese authorities in Inner Mongolia have sentenced to labor camp a mother who tried to seek redress for the death of her husband during annual parliamentary sessions which closed this week, a rights group said on Friday.
Song Cuirong was handed a month sentence of "re-education through labor" on March 6 by authorities in her hometown of Jalaid Banner after she traveled to Beijing to petition over the death of her husband, whom she says was beaten to death by assailants who paid off the local police to avoid capture. Song is currently being held at the Tumuji labor camp for "undermining the harmony and stability of the parliamentary sessions," it said.
Song was detained last year on a previous trip to petition central government departments in Beijing and sent back to her hometown, where she was held in an unofficial detention center commonly known as a "black jail. Authorities across China tightened their surveillance of rights activists and dissidents ahead of the annual parliamentary sessions, holding many under house arrest or forcing them to take a "vacation" under police escort for the day duration of the meetings. The clampdown also coincided with the first anniversary of online calls for a "jasmine" revolution, inspired by a series of uprisings in the Middle East.
News of petitioners' treatment at the hands of the authorities has continued to emerge since the NPC closed on Wednesday. Henan-based activist Cheng Jiangping, who was sent to a labor camp on her wedding day over a nationalistic retweet the authorities didn't like, said she was intercepted by state security police after she left her hometown to travel to Shanghai during the parliamentary sessions. No sooner had I checked into a guesthouse than they knew about it.
Heilongjiang petitioner-activist Shan Yajuan confirmed reports that she was rushed to the hospital on Wednesday after going on a hunger strike during her detention in a "black jail" in the northeastern city of Jixi on March Shan's protest came after she was seized and beaten by Jixi representative officials in Beijing while trying to petition at the Supreme People's Court. She has been a vocal campaigner against China's system of black jails.
