According to a recent news report from the China Citizens Movement, Huang Qi, the founder of the June Fourth Movement, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison, was allowed to speak with his mother, who is seriously ill, before the Chinese New Year, after the authorities repeatedly denied his lawyer and Family members’ requests to meet with him. A Skynet volunteer revealed that Huang Qi’s health condition in prison is worrisome.
On the morning of February 8, 2021, Huang Qi, who is still serving a prison sentence, was allowed to speak with his mother, Pu Wenqing, for ten minutes. This was the latest communication between mother and son since last September’s remote video.
After founding June 4 SkyNet in 1999, a website that monitors the human rights situation in China, Huang Qi has often published articles critical of current affairs and reports on the rights of petitioners, drawing the attention and displeasure of the Chinese Communist Party authorities. Huang Qi was arrested on the eve of the June 4 anniversary in 2000 for publishing articles commemorating the 1989 student democracy movement. After three years of illegal detention, he was sentenced to five years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power,” and again after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake for helping Parents of students who died in the quake to defend their rights and expose “tofu-dreg projects. A year later, Huang Qi was sentenced to three years in prison for “illegal possession of state secret documents.” In 2019, the Mianyang Intermediate Court in Sichuan Province declared Huang Qi guilty of “intentionally leaking state secrets” and “illegally providing state secrets to foreign countries. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison for both crimes. The June Fourth website has continued to report on a large number of human rights cases and news, despite several rounds of cyber attacks in recent years.
Huang Qi (left), the director of June 4, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for “leaking secrets,” was allowed to speak with his mother, Pu Wenqing (right), before the Chinese New Year in 2021 (courtesy of Pu Wenqing, date of photo unknown)
Huang Qi’s nutritious meals in prison were cancelled and his mother was placed under house arrest.
Wang Jing, a volunteer for the June 4 Movement in exile in the United States, told us that Huang Qi’s mother, Pu Wenqing, was accompanied by public security officers during the call. During the ten minutes, Huang Qi told his mother about his health, the appeal materials he had submitted, and his request to meet with his lawyer, and then the call was interrupted by the Chinese Communist authorities: “The public security officers came to Huang Qi’s mother’s house, and she talked to Huang Qi on the phone under the surveillance of the local public security officers. Huang Qi said his nutritious meals were canceled after his first video meeting last year. Huang Qi wrote some materials for the prison to forward to the Supreme People’s Court, but he was concerned about whether the prison had forwarded the materials. For another, Huang Qi still wants to see a lawyer.”
No lawyer has succeeded in seeing Huang Qi since Liu Zhengqing, a lawyer representing him, met with him in December 2018. Wang Jing said that Huang Qi’s two lawyers had repeatedly applied to meet with him, but were unreasonably refused by the authorities, with the prison and the local judicial bureau even passing the buck to each other, and recently rejected the application on the grounds of “Epidemic prevention”.
Wang Jing said there is no way to know from a 10-minute phone call whether Huang Qi has been subjected to other inhumane treatment in prison: “It’s hard to know because the prison won’t allow you to talk about these things, whether you call Home, write a letter or meet with your family, the prison will tell you that you are only allowed to talk about the good things in prison, otherwise your rights will be revoked. They can cut off your phone at any Time, and they can suspend the meeting at any time.”
Wang Jing told the station that Huang Qi’s mother, Pu Wenqing, suffers from a lung tumor that has spread to her cervical spine, and with severe diabetes, her health is deteriorating. In addition, according to other volunteers who visited her, she is under house arrest and is being monitored by the authorities: “(Pu Wenqing) said that it is too expensive to treat her illness and that she cannot afford it anymore. The money for Medicine is more than 2,000 yuan per month, and the pressure of Life is quite high. Huang Qi’s nutritious meals were cancelled again, and she wanted to give Huang Qi supplementary nutrition, and the living expenses she sent were limited.”
Chinese Communist authorities tough to suppress international aid difficulties
Teng Biao, a Chinese legal scholar who teaches at The New School in New York, told the station that Huang Qi was one of the first people in China to do human rights work through the Internet, and that he persisted after being jailed twice, making him one of the country’s most sensitive figures. He argued that although the Chinese Communist authorities have intensified their crackdown on human rights defenders under Xi Jinping, they have not been able to deter solidarity and international support: “The Chinese government is increasingly unconcerned about international and domestic pressure, but as someone who is concerned about Huang Qi and the human rights situation in China, they still have to keep spreading the word about these cases and providing information to other governments and human rights organizations. provide information. Huang Qi’s family also needs humane help.”
However, Wang Jing said that the Chinese Communist authorities would consider international assistance as “foreign forces” and that once the so-called “foreign forces” intervene, Wang Jing fears that Huang Qi’s situation in prison will worsen. Therefore, the volunteer group of the June 4 Network is not considering seeking help from other governments or international human rights organizations to put pressure on the Chinese Communist authorities, but can only provide humanitarian help to Huang Qi’s family through fundraising.
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