Authorities in the Chinese capital beat a rights activist who last week tried to visit Liu Xia, the wife of jailed Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo under house arrest at her Beijing home, leaving her with serious injuries.
Henan-based activist Liu Linna, who is widely known by her nickname Liu Shasha, Hong Kong activist Yeung Hong, and two unnamed netizens had gotten as far as the residential compound in a Beijing suburb where Liu Xia has been held under police guard since October 2010, when the Nobel committee first announced her husband's award.
Holding a placard with the words "Liu Xia, everyone is behind you!" and shouting slogans through a megaphone, the activists were quickly detained and questioned for several hours.
Yeung was released back to Hong Kong officials, while the other two were allowed to return home, earlier reports said.
But Liu Shasha was handed over to officials and police from Henan, and was incommunicado for several days.
Liu said in a phone conversation recorded by Beijing activist Hu Jia this week that she had been beaten up following the incident, and was now suffering from concussion with perforated ear-drums.
"Yes, that's right," she told Hu, who asked her to confirm her injuries. "So it's very painful for me to take a phone call right now."
"Neither of my ears feels normal."
'Pinning me to the floor and boxing my ears'
She said the authorities had escorted her back to an undisclosed location in Henan following the attempt to visit Liu Xia.
"They confiscated my bank card, and I demanded it back from them. They reacted by pinning me to the floor and boxing my ears a great many times," Liu said.
"For the past few days, they have prevented me from going to the hospital, and they dragged it out here and there until finally we came back to Nanyang, " she said.
"I still haven't been for a check-up."
Liu said she had been bleeding from the ears.
"Right now it's very painful for me to hear any sort of sound. Half of my head is throbbing," she added.
Liu was detained by police in a midnight raid on a visit to Beijing last July, where she had been a vocal supporter of dissident artist Ai Weiwei.
Liu was also instrumental in promoting Charter 08, a controversial document calling for sweeping political change in China that led to the jailing of Liu Xiaobo for 11 years in December 2009 on subversion charges.
Reported by Xin Yu for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.