blog 11: Chinese women's rights activist sent to labor camp again

Mao Hengfeng was taken by a team of security officials on September 20 in Beijing when she was petitioning the authorities for the abuses she suffered during her previous labor camp sentences. Her husband, Wu Hengfeng, said he received a letter from the authorities late on Monday informing him that Mao had been sentenced to a labor camp for "disturbing social order", which he said was unsupported. "She is not guilty and she didn't break any laws," Wu said. "They are fabricating offences, making up evidence to lock up people who did not commit crimes in prisons and labor camps." Unfortunately, Wu knows nothing about her whereabouts. Apparently, she was last held the Yangpu district police detention centre in Shanghai but calls to the centre were unanswered. As President Hu Jintao prepares to transfer power as party leader to anointed successor Vice President Xi Jinping, China’s “stability-obsessed” rulers are not taking any chances to ensure an image of “harmony”.  Mao, who has three daughters, has been petitioning the government since she was dismissed in 1988 from her job at a soap factory after becoming pregnant a second time, in breaking of the one-child policy. Mao had been arrested several times before though. She was sentenced in February 2011 to a labor camp for conducting "illegal activities". In 2010, she was sentenced to one and a half years of "re-education through labor" on charges of "disturbing the public order" for a protest at the trial of jailed 2010 Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo. Then, she was released six months early from a labor camp in Anhui because of poor health, her husband said, adding that he is worried about Mao because of her high blood pressure. Mao is just one of the rebels being rounded up by the country’s communist party.
I envy Mao Hengfeng for her courage in standing up to China’s government. She wasn’t afraid to be retained for standing up for what she believed in, and that takes audacity. I understand China’s being overpopulated, but I have never agreed with their one child rule. Family’s should be able to have as many children as they wish, and not be punished or fined for doing so. I thought of the documentary we watched in class last week, Robot Nation, and how Japan’s government is actually paying couples to have children while China is telling individuals to cut down on reproduction. I think there is irony in the situation. What is even more disturbing is how the government is said to be fabricating offences and making up evidence to lock up people who did not commit crimes in prisons and labor camps. It fills me with rage think that they are locking up and executing innocent individuals!




http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/06/us-china-labour-idUSBRE8A50DL20121106