WASHINGTON – Ding Jiaxi knew he would spend his 57th birthday alone in a Chinese prison cell, with out a call from his family or the possibility to stretch in the daylight.
It was the fifth yr that the activist had lived in these conditions. Although his family within the US received letters assuring him that he was healthy, his wife Sophie Luo was not convinced.
“I'm really worried about his health because he has been tortured before,” Luo told the Associated Press from Washington.
Luo shared details of her husband’s plight ahead of his birthday on Saturday and make clear the hard Treatment of the country’s imprisoned political prisonerswho, based on families and human rights groups, are sometimes denied rights corresponding to outdoor exercise and speak to with their family members.
Beijing said the prisoners' rights were protected under Chinese law. The Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately reply to an email in search of comment.
Ding, a key member of the now-defunct New Citizens' Movement, which sought to advertise democracy and civil society in China, was arrested in December 2019 after attending a casual meeting within the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen to debate current affairs. In April 2023, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for subverting state power.
Maya Wang, acting China director of the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, described the tough treatment of political prisoners in China as “commonplace.”
“Unfortunately, abuses are widespread and have become even worse under Chinese President Xi Jinping,” Wang said. Political prisoners were torturedThey don’t have any access to lawyers and “very little” contact with their families, she said, adding that the secrecy has made it easier for prisoners' abuse to proceed and their health has suffered.
Representative Adam Schiff, who sits on a bipartisan congressional human rights commission, called for Ding's release.
“Once again, he will be alone in a prison in China's Hubei province. He will be separated from his loved ones – his wife and children. He will spend another birthday in isolation – his fifth in prison,” Schiff, Democrat of California, said in an announcement released Friday.
Luo said she has not been allowed to check with her husband on the phone since he was taken away by authorities in 2019. Since then, “I haven't heard his voice,” said Luo, who moved to the U.S. with the couple's two children shortly after Ding was first arrested in 2013.
It was not until March of this yr that she received his first letter. Ding was not allowed to write down letters about his case, his treatment in prison or other topics considered sensitive by the Chinese government, Luo said.
And she lamented Ding's absence from her two daughters' lives. “He can't be with the girls when they need a father the most,” she said. “It's really a big loss.”
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