2014-12-09
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Hada (L) shares a meal with son Uiles (C) and wife Xinna (R) in a file photo.
AFP
A long-serving ethnic Mongolian dissident released by the Chinese authorities on Tuesday has detailed years of physical abuse and torture at the hands of prison staff during nearly 20 years of detention.
Hada, who is in his fifties, was released after four years’ extrajudicial detention at the Jinye Ecological Park in the regional capital Hohhot, where he was being held after serving a 15-year jail term for “separatism” and “espionage.”
“After so many years of torture, my body is riddled with disease, and all for what was a miscarriage of justice in the first place,” Hada told RFA shortly after his release.
“I have been diagnosed with more than 10 different conditions, all of them the result of the torture, physical punishments and maltreatment I suffered in jail,” he said.
Hada said police had privately acknowledged the extent of the mistreatment, and vowed to “pursue those criminally responsible.”
But he said state security police had still imposed conditions on him after his release.
Hada said he was transferred to civilian living quarters on Nov. 17 and told he could continue to live there if he kept quiet about his treatment behind bars.
“They will only let me live here if I do as they tell me,” Hada said. “I am not to give interviews to overseas media, I have to confess my guilt and promise not to sue them.”
“So I can’t complain about, nor publicize, my torture and physical abuse at their hands,” said Hada, who refused to agree to the terms.
Four-year detention
Hada’s post-jail detention was justified by the authorities as being the four-year deprivation of political rights that accompanied his original jail term.
Deprivation of political rights refers in Chinese law to the right to vote or be selected as an electoral candidate and the rights of freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association and demonstration, as well as the right to hold government office or a job in a state-run organization.
