Prominent Chinese civil rights lawyer Guo Feixiong has been beaten in prison and is now on the fifteenthday of a hunger strike, his wife and sister have said.
“He was beaten Dec. 18, the fifth day after he entered the prison in Meizhou. A fellow prisoner beat him while more than 200 other prisoners looked on,” Guo’s wife, Zhang Qing, told RFA’s Mandarin service after visiting with Guo for 40 minutes on Dec. 28. She was accompanied by his older sister, Yang Maoping.
“He told me he was beaten for a long time. The prisoner stopped beating him only when the onlookers began to boo and shush to express their displeasure. In the process of the beating, he fell from the stairs, about two meters,” Zhang said.
Guo Feixiong, the professional name of Yang Maodong, is serving a five-year sentence for conducting illegal business activities, after publishing a book about a political scandal and helping villagers lead a campaign to oust local officials accused of corruption. [Full Text]
[Photo source: May 2006: Human rights lawyer Guo Feixiong during an interview in RFA’s Washington DC studios. Photo: RFA]