2008 Olympic Profile: Mao Hengfeng

Today is the first day of the 2008 Summer Olympics games in China. Instead of writing about the Games, though, I’ve decided to write one post a day about someone the Chinese Government has snatched up and throw in one of their brutal prisons. I’ll be leaning heavily on places like Human Rights Watch because, I’m sorry to say, there isn’t exactly a ton of information about the prisoners that China is torturing even as I write this.

The person I want to tell you about today is Mao Hengfeng. In 1988 she was reportedly fired from her job at a soap factory for being pregnant with her third child (her first pregnancy turned out to be twins). She protested the decision and was placed in a psychiatric prison where she had drugs forced into her. She appealed the dismissal and, when that case came before the courts, she was pregnant with her fourth child. The judge told her that he would rule in her favor if she had an abortion. She complied but the judge ruled against her anyway.

In 2004, because of her protest work, she was sentenced to a “Reeducation through Labor” camp where she was regularly beaten and hung from the ceiling. She has spent her life since then in and out of prison enduring such abuse as being gagged with cloths soaked in harsh chemicals, being beaten by fellow inmates who were ordered by guards to do so, being housed in a cell with running sewage on the floor, and having food forced down her throat by fellow inmates. She has been beaten numerous times and now suffers from ailments related to her brutal treatment at the hands of Chinese authorities.

As best I can tell, because it’s tough to get reliable news out of China about people like Hengfeng, she is in prison, sentences to two and a half years for breaking two lamps while under house arrest in December of 2006. When her husband visited her in 2007, she had visible signs of being beaten and was stopped by the guard from telling her husband about being force-fed while there.

Ms. Hengfeng has been oppressed by the Chinese government for twenty years for demanding rights that we treat as routine. As the athletes parade into the “Bird’s Nest”, she will languish in a Chinese prison, in constant fear of another beating or of having food shoved down her throat by those who are imprisoned with her. I wonder how many of the government officials sitting in the luxury boxes of that stadium had a hand in her long nightmare.

Other Posts of Interest:

• 2008 Olympics: Now Mostly Riot-Free!
• The President Whiffs on the Olympics, but Our Athletes Come Through
• China Cracks Down Harder. So Where Are George Bush and John McCain?

Tags: 2008 Olympics, China, Mao Hangfeng

Category: 2008 Olympics, Featured