Activist Women Feeling the Heat

A member of a banned rights group in the southwestern Chinese province of Guizhou describes harsh security measures ahead of a key leadership transition at the National Congress of the ruling Communist Party next month, while the wife of a jailed group member shares fears for his state of health. Around 10 members of the Guizhou Human Rights Forum were detained last November after Chen Xi, now serving a 10-year jail term for subversion, and Li Renke tried to seek nomination in district-level legislative elections:

Wu Yuqin, member of the Guizhou Human Rights Forum:

At first, they had us under house arrest at a holiday resort. Then my mother fell ill at the resort and started to cough up blood, so they took her to the hospital. On the day she came out, they told us to return to the holiday resort, but we said that if anything happened to my mother, that they would bear the full responsibility. It was only then that they let us stay [under house arrest] at home.

All of us [under house arrest] are members of the Guizhou Human Rights Forum. They have taken away our permit [as a social organization] because they say that we didn't go and register properly at the civil affairs bureau. Now they are suppressing us by not allowing us to meet. Actually every one of our members is now under house arrest. They don't want us to get together. We haven't been able to call each other for a long time now, and I can't make any calls at all. I think they are controlling the lines. The crackdown has been particularly harsh this year.

Zhang Qunxuan, wife of jailed Guizhou activist Chen Xi:

This month [Chen Xi] was in a very poor state. He is much thinner; a bag of bones. Also, he seemed dull and listless. He looked pretty poorly. I asked him about it, but he said it was nothing. We had very little time together; only 20 minutes. There were a lot of people accompanying him. They told me that the quality of food in jail was very poor. I said that it had never been good, but he didn't want to talk about it any more.

After I got back from [visiting him in jail] I went to see [the police]. The local branch of the police wrote a report for the municipal police department, for them to mediate [with the jail]. I told them that they should get back to me after they had done this, but I haven't had any kind of response from them so far.

Reported by Fang Yuan and Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated by Luisetta Mudie.