The plight of a mother sentenced to a labor camp for demanding tougher punishment for those who allegedly raped and forced her daughter into prostitution has rallied China’s online community — and even prompted an official rebuke from the Communist Party’s main mouthpiece.

Tang Hui was sent to one and a half years of labor education last Thursday. According to a statement from local police in the city of Yongzhou, Ms.Tang had been urging officials to give the seven suspects in her daughter’s case the death penalty. Two of them were sentenced to death, four to life imprisonment and one to 15 years in prison this June.

The statement said Ms. Tang last year on seven separate occasions blocked official cars at the local courthouse, at the homes of local party representatives, at the police station and at schools. Her actions “severely disturbed order in workplaces and in society, which had an extremely terrible social impact.”

The police said that her sentence was based on a Chinese labor re-education law. Critics point out that the law targets murderers, rapists and reactionaries whose circumstances – such as their age – call for less-serious punishment than prison. They also said Ms. Tang was sent to the labor camp without the benefit of a trial.

Some are calling for abolishing the labor education system. ” If you make the local officials angry, they can put you in prison without going to trial or [the opportunity to] question evidence,” said Murong Xuecun, a prominent Chinese writer, in his verified Weibo account. “Citizens cannot be safe unless the labor education system gets abolished.”

Ms. Tang’s case can be traced back to 2006, when she rescued her then 11-year-old daughter from a brothel – where she was raped and beaten – where she was kept for three months after being kidnapped, according to a report in by South Metropolitan Daily.

“Ms. Tang told us that she is in a good health condition and the staff in the camp is treating her well,” Hu Yihua, one of the lawyers representing Ms. Tang in the case, told the China Real Time. “But she said she misses her daughter so bad.”

Continue reading original article.  

The plight of a mother sentenced to a labor camp for demanding tougher punishment for those who allegedly raped and forced her daughter into prostitution has rallied China’s online community — and even prompted an official rebuke from the Communist Party’s main mouthpiece.

Tang Hui was sent to one and a half years of labor education last Thursday. According to a statement from local police in the city of Yongzhou, Ms.Tang had been urging officials to give the seven suspects in her daughter’s case the death penalty. Two of them were sentenced to death, four to life imprisonment and one to 15 years in prison this June.

The statement said Ms. Tang last year on seven separate occasions blocked official cars at the local courthouse, at the homes of local party representatives, at the police station and at schools. Her actions “severely disturbed order in workplaces and in society, which had an extremely terrible social impact.”

The police said that her sentence was based on a Chinese labor re-education law. Critics point out that the law targets murderers, rapists and reactionaries whose circumstances – such as their age – call for less-serious punishment than prison. They also said Ms. Tang was sent to the labor camp without the benefit of a trial.

Some are calling for abolishing the labor education system. ” If you make the local officials angry, they can put you in prison without going to trial or [the opportunity to] question evidence,” said Murong Xuecun, a prominent Chinese writer, in his verified Weibo account. “Citizens cannot be safe unless the labor education system gets abolished.”

Ms. Tang’s case can be traced back to 2006, when she rescued her then 11-year-old daughter from a brothel – where she was raped and beaten – where she was kept for three months after being kidnapped, according to a report in by South Metropolitan Daily.

“Ms. Tang told us that she is in a good health condition and the staff in the camp is treating her well,” Hu Yihua, one of the lawyers representing Ms. Tang in the case, told the China Real Time. “But she said she misses her daughter so bad.”

Continue reading original article.