Chinese writer freed after five years

A Chinese dissident writer who was freed this week after five years in jail for alleged illegal business activities said today that he had been wrongly imprisoned and subjected to treatment “beyond people’s imagination” while in custody.

Yang Maodong said the charges against him were trumped up and during his time in custody his interrogators only questioned him about his pro-democracy activities, not business matters.

“I am innocent,” he said. “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 yesterday. The writer’s advocacy group, International PEN, has said he was targeted for writing the book Shenyang Political Earthquake, which allegedly exposed official corruption in a north-eastern province.

Human rights groups have said that Yang, also known as Guo Feixiong, was tortured by police in his home province of Guangdong and in Shenyang and was also mistreated in prison in Guangdong.

The New York-based advocacy group Human Rights In China said in a statement today that 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. At the Meizhou Prison in Guangdong, he was allowed to be beaten by an inmate while 200 others watched, it said.

The group quoted Yang’s wife, Zhang Qing, who now lives in the United States, as saying that police in Guangzhou and Shenyang “tortured him by using abominable measures”.

Yang declined to describe his treatment by authorities.

“The only thing I can tell you is that I was given special treatment beyond people’s imagination in the detention centre in Liaoning and in prison,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it in detail. I want to convey a message of forgiveness to the public and not to talk about hatred.”

An official at Meizhou Prison said the jail did not comment on individual cases. The number for the general office of the Shenyang Public Security Bureau rang unanswered.

Yang was previously arrested in 2005 for helping villagers in Guangdong who were seeking to unseat local officials accused of corruption. He wrote several articles posted on the internet about their plight. He also said he was beaten outside a police station in the area in February 2006.