Source: www.ChinaAid.org
Date: December 3, 2020
Dong Yaoqiong, known as "Ink girl" for defacing a poster of Xi Jinping with ink.
(Photo: ChinaAid)
In a live video on Twitter in front of Shanghai Haihang tower posted on July 2018, to express her discontent towards the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Dong Yaoqiong (internet handle: “feefeefly”) splashed ink on a propaganda poster of President Xi Jinping. After the ink incident quickly spread on the internet and received responses from netizens, CCP authorities sieged Ms. Dong and had her admitted to a psychiatric facility against her will. Currently, since being released from the psychiatric hospital and then later readmitted and released again, she “works” in a local government agency.
On November 30, after the CCP silenced her for more than two years, Ms. Dong recently recounted her story online in a self-recorded video. In her post, she shares several complaints and appeals. She stresses that she wants freedom and a normal life. She says that this second time CCP authorities released her from the psychiatric facility, they have arranged for her to “work” at the local government. Ms. Dong, from Zhuzhou City Yao county, Henan Province, once worked at Shanghai Real Estate Company.
"It’s so-called 'working,'” she said, “but in reality, it is to keep an eye on me because I am restricted wherever I go. I no longer fear the CCP. I want to fight for my freedom. If I die, I die."
As Ms. Dong reveals her current situation in a three-minute video, she states CCP officials constantly monitor her; that they have socially isolated her. “I need the freedom to choose my own job and social circle,” she said. “Authorities limit all my liberties. I cannot even contact my father. I found out what happened to him through Ou Biaofeng."
According to human rights activist Ou Biaofeng, Ms. Dong’s father (Dong Jianbao), who works in the coal mines of Yuanjiangshan, Leiyang City, Hunan Province, recently experienced a close encounter with death. On the morning of November 30, a flooding accident occurred in the mine where he worked. Only two of 15 workers successfully escaped successfully. Mr. Dong, one of the survivors, said that he mourns for the13 workers only given a slim chance of survival. Ou Biaofeng said that Ms. Dong Yaoqiong, a Christian, had told him: “I will forever love God. Thank you for protecting my father, who has gone through many hardships. I have a Bible,” she said, “but I cannot find it. One day, I know it will reappear.” After the incident which Shanghai’s domestic security considered “an attack on the country’s leader,” CCP authorities hurriedly removed propaganda posters featuring President Xi. In addition to committing Ms. Dong to a psychiatric facility against her will, CCP officers also arrested and detained Dong’s father for a time. Shanghai Municipal People’s government directed an expert to diagnose Ms. Dong as a psychiatric patient and then instructed Shanghai police authorities to send her to her hometown Hunan province. On July 16, 2018, officials committed her into the psychiatric hospital in Hunan province. A staff member of the psych hospital once expressed that authorities admitted Ms. Dong not as a patient, but as a “political prisoner.” Authorities regularly use imprisonment in psychiatric hospitals as one of their methods to suppress people who express dissatisfaction or appeal to the government.
During her stay at the psychiatric hospital, Dong said, “The doctor once asked me, 'What kind of medicine do you want me to prescribe for you?'” On Jan. 2, 2020, Dong's attending doctor discharged her. During the interim hospitalization, however, Ms. Dong became taciturn, dramatically different from her lively self, before her “treatment.”
Staff writers at the Catholic Weekly report:
Dissidents, believers, or petitioners are jailed in psychiatric hospitals for years. For law enforcement officers, it’s an easy way to earn extra cash from the people who want to deal with the “troublemakers” and also a possibility to demonstrate to their superiors that they work “effectively.”
A staff member in a psychiatric hospital in Shandong’s Dezhou city told Bitter Winter that police quite often bring people in handcuffs and shackles, their heads covered with black hoods, for “treatment.”
“The hospital treats them regardless if they are ill or not, as long as they are sent here,” the employee explained. “If they refuse to take drugs, we’ll force them. The government does not tolerate petitioners; they call them ‘mentally ill.’ When they are sent here, their mental condition is normal, but it deteriorates after the ‘treatment.’”
At the end of her recent public video, Ms. Dong raises her voice as she asks: “Did I break the law? I have a mental disorder? “Before splashing the ink," she says, "I worked at a Shanghai company. You can ask my colleagues if anything happened to my mental state. I am someone who is mentally normal.” Ms. Dong does not know if the CCP will subject her to new pressures for publishing her latest video. At times, she said that she feels like she cannot take the intense surveillance but she will deal with whatever comes. She stresses that she will continue to fight for her freedom. Ms. Dong, a woman who loves the Lord, calls out to the world with a plea for prayer… Please continue to keep me, my father, and my child in your prayers.
Ms. Dong’s child holds the now missing Bible that she has owned for years.
(Photo: ChinaAid)
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