China frees 1989 protester who daubed paint on Mao portrait

A MAN who was jailed for throwing paint on Mao Zedong’s portrait in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square during pro-democracy protests in 1989 has been released after nearly 17 years in prison, his family said.

Meanwhile, another man involved in the same incident who spent 11 years in jail was recently arrested again - this time for hunger striking, a human rights activist said yesterday.

Yu Dongyue’s release on Wednesday came ahead of a US visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao in April. It did not appear a gesture to Washington: Yu served his full sentence.

“This has absolutely nothing to do with Hu Jintao’s visit,” said John Kamm, director of the San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation, which studies Chinese prisons.

There are at least 70, and possibly as many as 300, prisoners still serving sentences for convictions stemming from the 1989 protests, Kamm said.

Yu, aged 38, returned to his family home in Shegang, a city in the southern province of Hunan, his brother and father said.

“His health is okay, but mentally he is traumatised,” his brother, Yu Xiyue, said.

Yu was one of three men who received long prison terms for throwing black and red paint on the 30-foot-tall portrait of Mao, overlooking Tiananmen Square.

They attacked the portrait on May 23, 1989, as thousands of student-led protesters marched through the square.

The three men were grabbed by angry students who turned them over to police. The students said they opposed vandalism.

Mao, founder of China’s communist government, died in 1976, but is still revered as a patriotic figure, even though millions suffered in repeated political upheavals he launched.

Yu Dongyue was convicted, along with Yu Zhijian and Lu Decheng, of “counterrevolutionary destruction and counterrevolutionary incitement.”

A court said Yu Dongyue also tacked a poster of “reactionary slogans” on the former imperial gate, where the portrait hangs.

Yu Dongyue was sentenced to 20 years but later received two sentence reductions. His brother said his parents visited him once or twice a year in prison during his captivity.

Lu Decheng was sentenced to 16 years in prison but released after a decade. He went to Thailand, where he has applied for refugee status.

Yu Zhijian, a teacher, was sentenced to life in prison but released in January 2001.

Last Saturday, Yu Zhijian was arrested in his hometown of Changsha, capital of China’s southern Hunan, province, allegedly for taking part in a hunger strike, said Qin Zhao, a fellow Hunan-based activist.

Gao Zhisheng, a Beijing-based lawyer who has represented followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and other dissidents, launched the hunger strike movement early this month to protest what he called increasing violence against Chinese dissidents.

The human rights group Reporters Without Borders said Yu Zhijian had been charged with subversion.