Published: November 14, 2013
HONG KONG — A prominent human rights campaigner in southern China won his first meeting with a lawyer on Thursday after more than three months in detention and said he had been on a hunger strike, one of his lawyers said.
Yang Maodong, a writer and businessman better known by his pen name, Guo Feixiong, was detained by the police in Guangzhou, in Guangdong Province, in early August on allegations of “assembling a crowd to disrupt order in a public place.” He is one of several well-known rights advocates held on similar accusations after participating in grass-roots campaigns pressing the Communist Party for stronger legal and political rights.
Until now, Mr. Yang has not been allowed to see a lawyer, which his lawyers and supporters have said is a blatant violation of Chinese law. Mr. Yang’s lack of access to visitors prompted speculation from some of his supporters that he was ill, had been physically abused or was on a hunger strike.
Mr. Yang told a lawyer who was allowed to visit him, Chen Guangwu, that days after he was detained, he began to refuse to eat food, accepting for 25 days only glucose drinks and a nutritional intravenous drip. Mr. Chen declined to talk about the meeting. The account of it was given by Mr. Yang’s other lawyer, Sui Muqing, who said the police had excluded him from the meeting.
“Guo Feixiong’s health now is still poor,” Mr. Sui said in a telephone interview, citing a description from Mr. Chen. “He’s still suffering the effects. He staged the hunger strike because he felt that the police simply don’t have a good reason to arrest him. It was to show defiance.”
Officers who answered the phone at the Tianhe District Detention Center in Guangzhou, where Mr. Yang is held, declined to comment.
According to Mr. Sui, police interrogators have focused on Mr. Yang’s role in a demonstration in January, when rights campaigners and other aggrieved citizens gathered near the offices of Southern Weekend, a newspaper in Guangzhou, while journalists there held a strike against censorship. The police also questioned Mr. Yang about a petition that urged China to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Mr. Yang was formally arrested in September on the charge of disrupting order in a public place, Mr. Sui said.
He said the police could add other charges, including the much more serious crime of political subversion.
“If the police decide that he planned and organized these activities, then it would be normal for them to consider the crime of inciting subversion,” Mr. Sui said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 14, 2013
An earlier version of this article said that Mr. Yang had not been formally arrested. According to his lawyer, he was arrested in September on the charge of disrupting order in a public place.
A version of this article appears in print on November 15, 2013, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: China: Detainee Tells of Hunger Strike.
