2015-06-08
A file photo of a patient at a psychiatric hospital in Fuzhou receiving a blood transfusion with bound feet.
AFP Photo
Authorities in Shanghai have been holding an elderly veteran of China's 1978 pro-democracy movement in psychiatric facilities for more than five years, a whistleblowing psychiatrist has said, as Beijing issued a white paper lauding its own "tremendous" progress on human rights.
Qiao Zhongling—who is often spoken of in connection with Wei Jingsheng, the "father" of China's democracy movement now living in the United States—has been transferred between three separate psychiatric hospitals in Shanghai over the past five years, his former psychiatrist Ma Jinchun said.
Jin Zhong, editor-in-chief of the Hong Kong-based political magazine Kaifang, said Ma's account is backed up by the magazine's own research into Qiao's fate.
"Qiao Zhongling has been locked up in a psychiatric facility for five years, and has been transferred three times," Jin said. "[Ma] was Qiao's doctor at the most recent place he was sent to."
Ma had repeatedly raised concerns with hospital management that Qiao, 70, had no psychiatric illness, and recommended stopping his medication, Jin said.
"They were imposing treatment on him forcibly, for mental illness," he told RFA on Monday. "The medicine affected his brain, and also had a bad effect on his coronary arteries."
"Dr. Ma told the hospital management that Qiao Zhongling wasn't a mental health patient, but the leaders told him he had been brought there by the police, and that they couldn't get involved," Jin said.
"After that, he got curious, and got around the Great Firewall to find a lot of news stories about cases similar to Qiao Zhongling's," he said.
"Then he realized Qiao Zhongling was the victim of [political] persecution."
'Counterrevolutionary'
Qiao was designated a counterrevolutionary during the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), before joining the Democracy Wall movement instigated by Wei Jingsheng and a handful of other dissidents, and then starting the Shanghai Democracy Forum in 1978.
He was sentenced to three years' imprisonment during the crackdown by late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping that followed, and has remained under police supervision ever since.
"He has been under surveillance ever since he came out of jail at the end of his three-year sentence," Jin said. "They won't let him work, and they say he is a police informant."
According to Jin, Ma feared for his safety after he tried to save Qiao, so he took his whole family to the United States.
Now, activists fear that Qiao could be allowed to die in the hospital in a manner similar to the alleged 2012 suicide in police custody of veteran Tiananmen activist Li Wangyang.
