Paris-based Reporters Without Borders is calling on the Chinese authorities to release on humanitarian grounds of cyber-dissident Zhang Jianhong, 49, also known under the pen-name Li Hong. He’s been hospitalized for two months in Zhejiang provincial jail in southeastern China and suffers from partial paralysis. “He has been in Zhejiang prison hospital for almost two months. His condition has neither improved nor worsened. His muscles have wasted away. He no longer has any strength in his hands. He cannot wash his food bowl or his clothes,” his wife, Dong Min, told RFA’s Mandarin service. “He can do nothing for himself and has to be helped by other patients. If his condition worsens he could be completely paralyzed. This makes me very frightened.”
In June, his lawyer Li Jianqiang said he had received a letter from Li saying: “My illness is extremely rare. My condition has worsened and my muscles are atrophying. I can now barely move my arms and it is spreading to my legs. My feet are already paralyzed.”
Dong said her husband was was transferred Oct. 20 from his cell to the prison’s general hospital for treatment. Li Hong told his wife during a prison visit one day earlier that prison authorities had confiscated his diary and letters to his family. “He did not say much in his diary. Only a few sentences each day on his daily life in prison. His hand muscles are weak. Writing helps strengthen the muscles,” she said. “But they confiscated the diary. And they would not let him watch TV.”
Dong Min said she is able to visit Li Hong twice a month, 30 minutes each time.
Li Hong was arrested in 2006 and sentenced to six years in prison by a court in Ningbo on March 19, 2007. He ran a literary Web site, Aiqinhai.org, and he belonged to the Independent Chinese Pen Center (ICPC). He was convicted of “incitement to subversion of state power” for posting articles urging political reform.
RSF also slammed official harassment of Xiao Chun, a human rights activist based in the southern city of Shenzhen, who was beaten in a police station on Dec. 10 and forced to sign a document acknowledging that he was banned from talking to foreign news media. RFA’s Mandarin service interviewed him.
“I went to the Longgan district police station this morning because I had been given an appointment to discuss the progress of my complaint about a case of robbery and assault on me,” Xiao said. “When I arrived, the police beat me and locked me up in a small cell. They kept me there from 9:30 a.m. until 3 p.m. The police told me I was forbidden to get in contact with foreign media, which they called ‘reactionary,’ and made me sign a document accepting this.”
Xiao heads a Shenzhen-based organization that helps migrant workers. He has on several occasions been beaten up by police and thugs.
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