GUANGDONG-BASED human rights activist and writer Yang Maodong has been released from Meizhou prison in Guangdong after serving a five-year sentence on conviction of “illegal business activity”.
Mr Yang, who is better known by his pen name Guo Feixiong, has vowed to continue his fight for justice, the Human Rights in China group said in a statement.
During his time in prison he says he was tortured in various ways, including interrogation for 13 consecutive days and nights without sleep, being tied to a wooden bed for 42 days with his arms and legs shackled, and hung from the ceiling by his arms and legs while the police electrocuted his genitals with a high voltage baton.
“I am still the same person as five years ago. No amount of ‘special treatment’ would make me more radical or weaken me. My conviction in defending the rights of people has not changed in the slightest,” Mr Yang said in the statement. He was freed on Tuesday.
Mr Yang worked as a legal adviser with the Beijing Zhisheng law firm and was involved in local activism in Taishi village in Guangdong five years ago, where locals were trying to vote out a mayor accused of embezzling public funds.
He was sporadically beaten and jailed during that period, before disappearing after he announced plans to stage a hunger strike outside Beijing’s Zhongnanhai central leadership compound. He was arrested in September 2006 for “illegal business activity” and was held for 15 months before being sentenced in November 2007. He said the charges were trumped up.
His activism had long set him on a collision course with the Communist Party, which keeps a tight grip on rights campaigners, lawyers, journalists and academics, and has intensified that grip this year because of fears that the wave of “Jasmine Revolutions” of North Africa and the Middle East could spread to China.
There has been a series of reports lately about the mistreatment of several Chinese bloggers and other intellectuals who were rounded up earlier this year during the crackdown on dissent.
His ordeal has seriously damaged his health and left him frail. But he said: “I don’t care who did what to me in the past . . . I want to work hard to help bring about tolerance and reconciliation . . . I am filled with optimism for the future.”