China frees dissident writer
A Chinese dissident writer who spent five years in jail said Wednesday he was wrongly imprisoned and subjected to ill treatment beyond people's imagination.
Yang Maodong said that the charges of alleged illegal business activities for which he was jailed were trumped up and that his jailers only auestioned him about his pro-democracy activities not business matters .
I am innocent said Yang It's a political case and I was called a political prisoner in the places where I was detained. All of this is political persecution of me because I promoted democracy Arrested in September 2006 and sentenced in November 2007, Yang was released from prison Tuesday.
Yang's release comes as reports emerge about the alleged mistreatment of several chinese bloggers lawyers and other intellectuals who were rounded up earlier this year in a crackdown on dissent . Those detentions were related to government fears that anti government protests in North Africa and the Middle East could spread to China.
China's Communist leadership doesn't tolerate any perceived challenge to one party rule Critics are often jailed on vague charges of subversion and endangering state security or, some times for alleged economic crimes Increasingly police have also resorted to detaining people without charge and refusing to inform their families of their whereabouts.
Dozens of people disappeared into police custody for weeks or months at a time beginning in February Wang Songlian a researcher with China Human Rights Defenders in Hong Kong said Wednesday that her group has heard accounts of mistreatment from 10 of those . She said they described beatings repeated lengthy interrogations, being forced to sit or remain in very uncom fortable positions for long hours sleep deprivation and verbal threats to them selves and their famillies.
When they spoke with us they were pretty fearful and I think the threats have been pretty effective she said
The New York based advocacy group Human Rights in China said in a statement Wednesday that in 2007 Yang was interrogated for 13 days and nights without sleep 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 police electrocuted his genitals with a high voltage baton.
