Testimony of a Chinese Human Rights Defender: Inside China’s Brutal Prison System

Posted on 2024-12-19 by wrchina

Form: HRIC 12-17- 2024

Original author: Xie Wenfei. ( https://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2024/12/blog-post_64.html)

“Killing someone here is as meaningless as killing a dog. We wouldn’t even need to bury you. We’d just take you straight to the crematorium and burn you. It’s very near here, you know.”

HRIC has translated the harrowing testimony of Xie Wenfei (谢文飞), a Chinese human rights defender whose courage and suffering expose the horrifying depths of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) oppression. His statement was originally published in commemoration of Human Rights Day (10 December 2024). Xie, born in 1977 in Hunan Province, is known for his involvement in the Southern Street Movement, which advocates for democratic reform in China. His commitment to human rights has cost him his freedom, his health, and very nearly his life. In his statement, translated in full below, Xie depicts in graphic detail the brutal consequences faced by human rights defenders, pro-democracy activists, and intellectual dissidents who dare to confront the authority of the CCP.

On 29 April 2020, Xie published an article commemorating Lin Zhao, a dissident executed during the Cultural Revolution for her criticisms of Mao Zedong. By the evening, he had been seized. Xie was detained by the police in Chenzhou, Hunan, on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a deliberately vague and politically motivated accusation which the CCP levies against activists and critics. Thereafter, Xie was plunged into a nightmare of state-sanctioned physical violence, psychological torment, degradation and dehumanization in China’s detention centers and prisons. Xie’s testimony offers a stark reminder of the CCP’s disdain for basic human rights, and the chilling lengths it will go to in silencing political opponents.

Xie’s story demonstrates clearly why international actors—including governments, civil society organizations, and human rights defenders—must not look away. We must continue to hold the CCP accountable for its violations. The prison abuses described by Xie reveal the darker realities of a government which not only tramples on fundamental principles of human dignity but seeks to legitimize its authoritarian model under the guise of global leadership. This is not just China’s problem—it is a global problem. If Beijing is allowed to normalize this system while positioning itself as a global leader, it will embolden other authoritarian regimes and undermine the very foundations of international human rights. We cannot let China rewrite the rules. China’s authoritarian practices must not become further normalized on the world stage.

Xie’s testimony not only chronicles the inhumane treatment he suffered but also serves as a powerful reminder of the price paid by those who resist the CCP. Beijing’s official narrative of ‘progress’ and ‘prosperity’ rings hollow when confronted with testimonies like Xie Wenfei’s, which reveal a system built on brutality, silence, and fear. This is the truth behind the propaganda. His closing reflection, quoting Alexis de Tocqueville, reminds us that the treatment of prisoners reveals the true measure of a society’s civilization. What does this say about China under the CCP? And what does it say about us if we fail to act?

Original： https://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2024/12/blog-post_64.html

On Human Rights Day, I want to share my personal experiences as a human rights defender.

On the morning of 29 April 2020, I published an article titled A Memorial for Lin Zhao. [Editor’s note: Lin Zhao, 1932–1968, was a prominent Chinese dissident who was imprisoned and later executed for her criticism of Mao Zedong’s policies during the Cultural Revolution.] That same evening, two burly men dressed in black (each weighing about 90 kilograms, as I estimated) ambushed me. They were hiding in the dark, waiting. When I tried to avoid them, they seized me, and without saying a word, pinned me to the ground. They held me there for a long time. Once I was taken to the case-handling center, I noticed that their T-shirts bore the words “Branded Ironhead” on the chest.

What human rights can we speak of?

On 28 May 2022, I was transferred from the Zixing Detention Center along with 146 others to Chenzhou Detention Center. In Cell 401, because I refused to squat, one brute took advantage of my unguarded moment and slapped me sharply across the face. I kicked him away without hesitation, but this led immediately to a group of thugs attacking me. I was forced to fight back in self-defense.

Unexpectedly, a person nicknamed “Director Li” entered the room and, again catching me off guard, slapped me hard in the face. (This surprised me because, despite having been detained in several detention centers previously and serving over six years in prison, I had never been struck by a police officer before.) After he left, at least seven or eight thugs, emboldened by his implicit encouragement, swarmed and overwhelmed me. I was beaten until I was dizzy, my head pounding as if it would explode. Multiple lumps formed on my scalp. The whole world seemed to spin, and I could barely stay upright.

Deputy Director Li later took me to the interview room. When I requested medical treatment for my injuries, he coldly refused. He then ordered me back to Cell 401. I replied bitterly that they might as well beat me to death. His reply? “Killing someone here is as meaningless as killing a dog. We wouldn’t even need to bury you. We’d just take you straight to the crematorium and burn you. It’s very near here, you know.” (This was the first time I learned just how close the crematorium was.) My head throbbed so severely it felt as though it was about to burst, like the torment Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, endured when the monk Tang Seng chanted the tightening spell in Journey to the West. Writhing on the floor in pain, I succumbed to a combination of rage and despair and collapsed.

Li ordered that I be dragged into solitary confinement in Cell 6011. When I woke up, I found myself lying on a concrete floor with a puddle of water beside me. My head was near the toilet. My socks were worn through, and the only “bed” in the room was a single wooden plank cemented to the wall.

For several days, my head continued to ache intensely, and the lumps on my scalp showed no signs of subsiding. I pressed the alarm button repeatedly for four days, requesting medical attention, but I was ignored. A three-day hunger strike didn’t bring any results either. No one admitted I had been beaten.

What human rights can we speak of?

On 30 May 2023, I was transferred from the Zixing Detention Center to Chenzhou Prison. Upon our arrival, they forced the 14 of us from Zixing to strip naked and perform squatting frog jumps in unison. I refused. Within an hour of arriving, I was confined to a 0.18-square-meter iron cage on the second floor of the reception center. The indoor temperature that day was 30°C, and for over eight hours, I was given only a small spoonful of water, no food, and my clothes were drenched with sweat.

That evening, I was transferred to a “high-security” area on the fifth floor, where, for two weeks, I was confined to a 0.7-square-meter iron cage for over 15 hours a day. For six consecutive days, I was not allowed to bathe, and for several days, I was denied both water and access to the toilet. I started a hunger strike. This changed nothing.

In front of over a dozen people (eight in iron cages and several wearing green vests), Warden Liang declared: “This person (referring to me) should be locked up tightly. Don’t give him water. Don’t let him use the toilet. Just make sure he doesn’t die here.”

Outraged, I requested to be put on a tiger bench—a notorious torture device—as both an act of defiance and a way to expose the system’s cruelty. Within two hours, my “wish” was granted. After less than ten minutes on the tiger bench, my hands swelled up, sweat poured from my head, forming a stream, and my clothes were drenched. The bench, designed for someone 10 centimeters taller than me, required them to forcibly stretch me forward to cuff my hands, which was extremely painful and exhausting. Onlookers could see that my condition was dire.

Several hours after being released from the tiger bench, my right thumb was numb, and I couldn’t move it properly for five days. Even two months later, it still felt as though connected to a low-voltage electric current.

What human rights can we possibly speak of?!

On 8 June 2023, in a document required by the prison, I wrote: “Since my arrival at Chenzhou Prison on 30 May, I have not been treated as a human being. Regardless of whether I am an ordinary person, a detained prisoner, a political prisoner, or even someone convicted of the gravest crimes, I am a human, and therefore I am entitled to the most basic human rights. Individual human dignity is an integral part of humanity’s collective dignity, and the latter is composed of the former. Even if a prison aims to ‘reform’ individuals, it cannot do so at the cost of trampling on and sacrificing human dignity.”

On 25 June 2023, I was transferred to Changsha Prison in Hunan province. My two boxes of books were not allowed inside, and even my attempt to bring in a single copy of 300 Tang Poems and Collected Annotations of the Four Books was rejected under the guise of a “zero possessions” policy. This was a supervisory measure personally introduced by Prison Director Lei Jianhua, designed to showcase his ultimate authority.

In early July, a fellow prisoner, aged 42, from Liuzhou, Guangxi, who arrived at the detention center on the same day as me, died. No one was held accountable; nothing happened. For nearly two months in the detention center, we were forbidden to read or write. I requested three times to borrow Records of the Grand Historian from the bookshelf but was denied each time.

On 21 August 2023, after being assigned to the Fourth Division, I was subjected to the punishment of being pinned to the corridor floor for five days in a row – all because I had refused the arbitrary command to squat. This punishment was carried out as a display to “make an example” of me and my disobedience. On 27 August 2023, I was beaten by both prisoners and officers for refusing to sing “red songs” as ordered. [Editor’s note: These are revolutionary propaganda songs glorifying the Chinese Communist Party and its leaders, often used as a tool of political indoctrination.] Officer Xie, the tallest officer in the division, kicked me violently, and told me: “Because this is a political matter, I can hit you, and I won’t face any consequences. Go ahead and complain to the Commission for Discipline Inspection; complain to the procuratorate, or even the prison director—I don’t give a shit.”

What human rights can we speak of?

On 29 August 2023, I was denied access to the toilet for so long that when I was finally permitted during a group break, it took me 20 minutes to urinate in broken intervals. I was verbally punished by an officer that same day.

Then, every morning and afternoon when water was distributed, I was only allowed one-third to half the usual amount. I was permitted to use the toilet only once each morning and afternoon. Fortunately, a slightly kind-hearted “Aunt Wu” ensured the punishment was not strictly enforced. A week later, I was returned to “normal” access, but the rule of only being allowed to fetch water twice a day remained in effect until my release on 29 October 2024. Every morning and afternoon, I endured thirst for two to three hours before I could drink hot water. My severe prostatitis went untreated. From 21 August to 30 December 2023, I and others filed requests to use the toilet a total of eight times, five of which were outright denied.

What human rights can we possibly speak of? This was worse than being an animal.

In the 16 months I served at Changsha Prison, I read only five books—less than what I read in one month at Heyuan Prison. Either I was prohibited from reading or I had no time or energy to do so. My six-year practice of calligraphy was forcibly ended—I was never even allowed to touch a writing brush.

As I wrote in a letter to Director Lei, which will never receive a reply: from the moment my two boxes of books were left outside Changsha Prison’s gate, my prison life became a nightmare. For someone like me, who has read for over a decade, having books to read makes even hell bearable. Conversely, being deprived of books makes even heaven feel like hell. My thanks to the prison education office for providing me with Francis Fukuyama’s Political Order and Political Decay on 8 March 2024, after I was beaten on 3 March and left with no avenue for complaint. It slowly brought me back to life.

Before the strict implementation of the “9511” system in August 2024, we worked over 60 hours per week for 13 months. [Editor’s note: “9511” refers to a prison management system in which prisoners are required to work 9 hours per day for 5 days a week, devote 1 day to study or “re-education,” and are permitted 1 day of rest.]

After moving to the new Changsha Prison site on 23 March 2024, we were forced to work extra night shifts for over a month. Personally, I was fortunate to endure only one such shift; however, among the 170+ other prisoners in my group, dozens were forced to work night shifts daily. Those who failed to complete required tasks faced a range of different punishments.

At the new site, in pursuit of so-called “dining order,” our meals—served in stainless steel trays—were placed on stainless steel tables before our shifts ended. By the time we ate, the food was stone cold, even in March, when many prisoners still wore winter clothes due to poor health. My complaints yielded no improvement. I remembered how, over a decade ago, the pigs we raised at home had their swill warmed for them— they never ate cold.

As a human rights defender, I was reduced to a state worse than that of pigs.

What human rights can we speak of?

Many may cite Article 7 of the People’s Republic of China’s Prison Law, which ostensibly guarantees prisoners’ rights and dignity. But any clear-headed person knows how far we are from achieving a rule-of-law society—if anything, we are moving further away from it.

Furthermore, Director Lei openly stated at an assembly that our identity “is that of criminals, what people normally refer to as ‘bad people’ (I strongly protest this statement and will demand a public apology from Director Lei when the time is right). We are here ‘to be punished.” He even boasted that Changsha Prison was already the best in China, the number one in Hunan. If it were any better, Dickens-inspired citizens dissatisfied with everyday life would flock here.

Under Director Lei’s “enlightened leadership,” marked by his tyrannical authority, few dared to file complaints. Even if they did, as in my case—when I was beaten, I wrote to the procurator stationed at the prison, and requested to meet my lawyer Zhang Lei—the complaint was torn up before my eyes.

“In Chinese prisons, especially in Changsha Prison, do not speak to me of human rights!”

This is Changsha Prison’s resounding declaration!

French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville once said:

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by examining its prison system.”

Oh, how these words ring true.

— Human Rights Defender Xie Wenfei, Written at Great Personal Risk on Human Rights Day, 10 December 2024

Human Rights Day : Justice for Two Girls Who Suffered Forced Hysterectomy

Posted on 2013-12-10 by wrchina

Author: WRIC Jing Zhang Dec 10, 2005 Translated by Qing Zhang Dec 10,2013

As the world celebrates Human Rights Day this, December 10^th, we hope to draw attention to two girls whose reproductive rights have been violated. By recognizing their plight as a modern and urgent one, and by adding our voices to those of other protestors, we can prevent such violence from being repeated.

In April, 2005, in China’s Nantong government-administered welfare institute, two women, dubbed Lan Lan and Lin Lin, were forced to undergo hysterectomies, an unofficial procedure that the director of the institute ordered without consent from either girl and without telling the public. A sympathetic doctor who was present blew the whistle, forcing the director to give an explanation. He said, “both girls have experienced menarche, which caused them such pain that they often cried out at night; to deal with this constantly would have been extremely inconvenient, and when they’re sexually mature it would have added another degree of inconvenience”. “Besides,” he said, “they’re mentally disabled—no one should even be talking about reproductive rights!” Other workers stated unequivocally that the institute was “doing a service to the public”.

What a claim to make! It is clearly outrageous to say that neural difference implies fewer rights, and that orphans that are different mentally have somehow forfeit their right to their own bodies, whose organs are suddenly subject to removal. In the eight weeks that have passed since their operations, the Chinese law enforcement apparatus has blocked any further information from being released: the two women have been sequestered from the public eye, and the media have stopped covering the incident.

Nantong government-administered welfare institute’s family portrait. The family portrait consists of both young and old because they were amalgamated into one institution.

Seven Other Children Forced to Undergo the Same Procedure

What is harder to believe is that the Nantong child welfare institute has performed similar procedures on six other girls.

A social worker who’d been at the institute for over 20 years, Mou Wang (an alias), reported to the Southern Metropolis Daily that since 1980, there have been several incidents of Nantong Welfare Institute doctors performing hysterectomies on mentally disabled women, against their will. “This is a well-kept secret inside the Welfare Institute; in the past they’ve always handled it that way”. Among those forced to undergo the surgery, four are still living: their names are Qin Wang (now in her thirties), Honghong (now in her thirties), Wanghou Zhu (now in her fifties), and Datou (in her thirties). Three others, named Meigou Jing, Tou Mu and Meihua Zhang, have all passed away. The names of all the women have been changed. Wang says, “After Meihua’s hysterectomy, the removal of her uterus, I stayed in the hospital and helped to look after her for a while, so I remember very clearly. The pain she was in kept her up all night, she was crying, it was very difficult to look at.”

“The women who had their uteruses removed are not suffering from ‘menstrual pains’, nor do they all ‘lack the ability to take care of themselves’, despite what Guilin Jia, department head, claims,” she says.

“Qin Wang could play the harmonica. Whenever you passed by, if you sang ‘Mama’s kisses are honey kisses’ [a popular Chinese song], she’d immediately join in,” Wang said. “Hong Hong is thirty right now and is very high functioning, carrying her own water from a well. Datou is even smarter, every day she takes a chair to the doorway and sits, and if a social worker walks by, she’ll shake his or her hand and smile.”

What was before a private orphanage and has been transformed into a state-run welfare institute was established on March 6, 2004, and now houses 74 orphans, among whom half have mental disabilities. Supposing half were female (a conservative estimate, since there are usually more girls than boys in orphanages), how many have had their uteruses removed because of “first onset of menstrual bleeding,” and how many more are condemned to a similar procedure in the future? If the “considerations” that these government-appointed guardians have made for the women are really lawful and ethical, then what will happen in to the 54000 children that are raised, in total, by other orphanages and welfare institutes in China?

The assistant-director of Nantong’s Chengdong hospital said: other places also do this practice, the only difference is that they haven’t drawn the attention. I alone know of two cases”.

People likely haven’t forgotten that in 1995, BBC and the New York Times published an exposé of Shanghai’s Child Welfare Institute’s mistreatment of children, where malnourished, bony children were tied to chairs with holes cut into the bottom so that they could defecate. These children were robbed of their dignity.

Service Worker Mindsets are Blatantly at Odds with the Law

The newly built, 14 million dollar Nantong child welfare institute appeared to offer much better living conditions, facilities, and amenities than those of institutes. It employed government-trained workers who were specially appointed to care for abandoned children. One would have hoped that these employees were trained and prepared to deal with a few “inconveniences”, in fact, it seems obvious that such “inconveniences” are precisely what the job requires them to diagnose and treat. A similar situation would be one in which a doctor of internal medicine, because of a patient’s troublesome problem with postnasal drip, orders that the patient’s nose be removed, or ordering an incontinent patient’s bladder be removed because he or she keeps wetting the examination bed. No degree of “inconvenience” to their appointed guardians should permit the infringement of these patients’ basic rights to their bodies. They, like any other children, ought to enjoy the right to basic material comforts and to guidance and care from their guardians, not to be used as a means for profit. That they are far more starved of these basic rights than most children, serves to heighten the injustice of their being treated like financial investments.

What separate humans from animals are our abilities to empathize with others, to care for the surrounding environment, and to have an intuitive sense of what is right and wrong. These are principles on which all orphanages, state-run or private, ought to be founded, and any reasoning based on “avoiding inconvenience” should only ever be secondary: the director, however, seems to have totally inverted his priorities.

If these forced hysterectomies had happened in rural areas where a lack of sexual education and of a knowledge of the law, there would be a different debate at hand. However, graduating from Nankai University’s sociology and being responsible for tens of children, vice-chair board Xiaoyan Chen cannot plead ignorance of legal statute, and yet he has blatantly flouted the law in co- authorizing such a procedure.

China’s Widespread Practice of Eating Placenta

In certain areas of the world where economic and cultural development occur simultaneously, the consumption of placenta, as well as other human organs, is considered strange, faddish, or outrageous. However, in areas of the world where economic development far outpaces the development of scientific education, there is still the folk belief that eating a fresh placenta, blood and all, can promote beauty and long life; as the practice became more widespread, doctors began taking placentas from mothers who’d just given birth, rather than throwing them out. A mother could buy back her placenta—for thirty RMB. When I worked in a clinic, it was common for fresh placentas to be quickly divvied up. Gynecologists, their staff, and their friends were prioritized, and the leftovers, if there were any, went to other departments. In China’s quickly expanding economy, placentas have become a kind of commoditized beauty and health supplement. The practice has even spread to Hong Kong. People sometimes bring placentas with them from the mainland to Baochun hospital, where I worked; the placentas that fetched the highest price were those of first-time mothers. The practice became so well-known that a movie, Jiaozi, was made in which characters eat fresh placental dumplings.

Placentas are one thing, but what about other organs? Some people need kidney transplants, heart transplants—is there a market for uteruses? What if uteruses suddenly were discovered to have some kind of health benefit? Though the line of reasoning quickly falls into absurdity, it is only different by degrees than the equally absurd reasoning given for the forced hysterectomies.

We know that the director of the Nantong welfare institute, Xiaoyan Chen, was able to order the surgeries because of his connections with the chief surgeon of gynecology at Nantong University’s affiliated Chengdong hospital. We know he rushed the girls over without any kind of legal permission and that he lied that they were there for appendectomies. In a country where 60% of people have reported aversion to doctor’s visits because the fees are too high, and where hospitals are frequently involved in embezzlement and malpractice suits, who is going to believe that doctors, without any kind of incentive or pressure, are going to cut out girl’s uterus to “benefit society”?

As for the girls, their disabilities prevent them from being able to vocally refuse the procedure, but it seems likely that even if they had said no, the director would not have listened to them anyway.

Legal Safeguards Offer Little Real Protection

In China’s “Law on the Protection of Disabled Persons”, the fifty second clause states clearly: exploiting those with disabilities, infringing on their human rights or any other legal rights, constitutes illegal behavior and will be punished as outlined by the relevant criminal law. Rape of disabled people or of people unable to recognize their own actions or give consent will be treated as any other form of rape and will be similarly punished by law.

Unless these two women were profoundly mentally disabled, there is no justification for their being forced to undergo hysterectomy and robbed of their rights to marriage and reproduction. The burden should not rest on women, but on men who rape them.

The “Law on Maternal and Infant Health care” states that in cases where mothers are sick and unable to give birth under proper conditions, a medical institution should handle the case, and in cases where women need to undergo ligation surgeries or other sterilization procedures, such procedures must meet the procedural and technological standards established by the State Council bureau of health, as well as approval by a governmental committee that is higher than county level”. Secret, non-consensual hysterectomies are clearly in violation of the law.

The “Law for the Protection of Minors” also states that parents or other legally appointed guardians are obligated to shelter and to demonstrate care for their underage children, that they must not mistreat them or abandon them; the fifty second clause says that infringing the human rights of minors and other legally given rights constitutes illegal behavior, and will incur investigation and punishment. Mistreating family members, behaving unfairly towards them, will incur punishment in keeping with article one hundred eighty two.

When I spoke to a lawyer based in Beijing, he told me that, because of the girls’ disabilities and in light of the fact that their organs were healthy, the people who ordered surgeries on them were acting in bad faith, that they had clearly taken advantage of them, and should be prosecuted for a criminal offense.

Lishui Zhao, head of the Beijing Chanke maternity hospital, says that female sterilization has especially strong negative effects on pre-pubescent or pubescent girls, permanently changing their mental and physical development and putting them at greater risk for health problems. Many will develop hormone imbalances, which can cause depression and insomnia. Hysterectomy on women with normally functioning uteruses is almost never justified.

More Secrets Exposed

The exposing of the welfare institutes’ activities caused an uproar among the public. However, though many different media outlets began covering the case, all refused to release detailed information. At the end of April, the Nantong prefectural government released a statement that it would be “making a unanimous decision soon”, but did not elaborate. On June 3^rd, the people’s court of Nantong’s Chongquan district still had not released a public statement as to the status of the case; as of today, little is changed. Different Nantong organizations, including the civil affairs bureau, district government, women’s league, and welfare agency, all either claimed to have heard only recently about the case or to have very limited knowledge about it. A few individuals have come forth and offered me the information that four people have been prosecuted and are awaiting verdicts in the comfort of their homes.

Many aspects of the welfare institutes are still hushed up. One is that they demand “adoption fees” from adoptive families, despite the fact that no law states that such a fine is needed. “Eighteen thousand RMB” is a phrase commonly heard by couples who adopt, after haggling, though eighteen thousand is the agreed-upon sum. The more kids are adopted, the more money the welfare institutes make, but where the money goes is unclear. One thing is certain: the quality of living among the orphans has hardly changed at all. They each continue to be raised on the 310 RMB monthly allowance that the government offers all orphans. Not long ago, it was revealed that some welfare agencies had even been buying children from child traffickers, and sold for money to traffickers.

Ten years ago, the Nantong welfare agency deliberately “discarded” two of its orphans in secret. One was just under ten years old, the other was from Haimen and was about fifteen. The reason was that they were “hard to care for, stole food, hit people, and were extremely loud,” such that the institute came up with a “brilliant plan” to hire two drivers to “drop them off” in a city in Zhejiang. The children liked car rides, and after they got in, the welfare workers pretended they had to leave to use the bathroom, whereupon the doors were closed and their responsibilities disposed of. Today, one of these workers has already been promoted to the general section leader, while another worker who was involved broke the case to the Southern Metropolis.

All China Women’s Federation Keep Quiet

What is perhaps the most confounding fact is that the organizations that allegedly stand for and fight for women’s rights and benefits, irrespective of size and importance, even the national women’s federation and many nonprofit women’s organizations, have refused to speak up for these two girls or to demand justice for them, to ask for civil and criminal proceedings against those responsible. Even those subsidized by western endowments like Forbes, the Ford Foundation, and Motorola have kept their mouths shut. In Jiangsu’s women’s federation, there are 2353 member organizations, all of which supposedly advocate for the rights of women, children, or disabled people. And yet, it’s nearly impossible to find a single newspaper, magazine, online publication even talking about this case, let alone covering it on-site or speaking critically of it. When I called the federation, everyone I talked to was evasive, saying that the issue wasn’t within their area of expertise or had nothing to do with them. The more sympathetic people asked me to speak to the civil bureau or the welfare institute itself, but no matter whom I asked, the end result was silence.

Not long ago, Beijing hosted the UN’s fourth world conference on women. However, during all the high-flown speeches about rights, no mention was made of these particular women or the institutional violence they suffered. The people who had the stage might have done better to stop speaking for a second, lean down from their platforms, and listen to the small, wordless cries of the women and children that they have failed to speak for.

Note: some information taken from the Southern Metropolis Daily and the Eastern Morning Post.