Inside Women's Detention Centers and Prisons
China Rights Forum, Fall 1995
Mo Lihua was an instructor at Shaoyang Normal College in Hunan Province when the 1989 Democracy Movement spread across China. Although initially not involved in the protests, after the declaration of martial law on May 19, she travelled to Beijing for a few days with several of her students. After the tanks moved in to crush the movement, Mo joined protests in Shaoyang. "On June 5," she writes, "I participated in a large-scale memorial ceremony held by the city's entire student body in Dongfeng Square in the city center. Shouting into a megaphone, I led the people in a chant: 'Save our students!' This is how I became a thorn in the side of the Communist Party authorities that could not be ignored."
On June 14, she was arrested, charged with counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement. Interrogators pressured her for months to "confess" to criminal intent, but she refused. At a public trial in front of thousands of spectators, Mo's spirited defense raised expressions of support while the prosecutors were jeered. However, on December 24, 1989, she was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison and a year's deprivation of political rights. "After the court adjourned, one of the prosecutors told me that I should not blame them. Our convictions had been decided by the higher authorities, and all they could do was try to press for the lowest sentence within a certain range," Mo writes.
Released ten months early for good behavior, Mo was kept under constant surveillance. In October of 1992, she heard that she would be rearrested for having granted an interview to a French reporter. She left home and fled across the border to Hong Kong. In November of 1993, she was granted political asylum in Sweden and moved there with her huband and son.
This account of her experiences in prison is part of a longer piece describing her arrest, interrogation, trial and imprisonment. The full text is part of HRIC's report "Fighting for Their Rights: Chinese Women's Experiences Under Political Persecution."
During the years that I was locked up I stayed in a total of three women's jails:the women's section of the Shaoyang Custody and Investigation Detention Center, the women's section of Shaoyang Detention Center and the Changsha Women's Prison (the only prison for women criminals in the entire province of Hunan).
The Custody and Investigation Center had the most abominable living conditions of all. According to the internal regulations of the Ministry of Public Security, these detention centers are intended for petty criminals and those suspected of crimes. But the truth is that these prisoners suffer from even harsher treatment than do convicted prisoners serving "reform through labor" sentences.
The women's section of the detention center was nothing but a single cell in the middle of a huge courtyard. All the other cells were for men. When entering the cell, you had to pass through four corridors of metal gates and one after another short, black doorways that made the place look like one big pig pen.
The women's cell was a dark room containing nothing but a large communal bed and a hole in the ground used for a toilet. The constant lack of water to wash the urine and feces down the hole caused the entire room to be filled with a terrible stench.
It was summertime when I first entered the prison, and during the day filthy flies covered the prison walls and would swarm over us while we ate. As the electricity was often out in the evening, the prison would be plunged into complete darkness and then masses of mosquitoes would attack us. I would have to bundle myself up completely from head to toe in the blanket my family had brought before I could outwit those sly, disgusting mosquitoes. But the weather at the time was very hot and with my entire body wrapped in a blanket, I would be bathed in sweat. All kinds of other little bugs and animals lived along with us in the prison, but what terrorized us the most were rats, nearly a foot long. They would crawl out of the hole filled with urine and feces and then scurry all over bodies and faces. The awful sanitary conditions in the detention center were intolerable.
There were two large barred windows in our cell, but they were so high up that we were unable to look out at the scenery or benefit from the fresh air. Yet these windows allowed the direct sunlight to pour in and turn the entire women's section into a high- temperature steam basket. During the burning hot days of July, we would get so hot that we could hardly breathe. And when the monsoon season began, the wild winds blew the rain right down on us through those two huge windows as they were not covered at all. Sometimes there would be no place to hide from it and we could do nothing but flatten ourselves into a corner of the cell like drenched chickens and watch as the rain soaked the blankets on our communal bed. Each heavy rainstorm was a great calamity for us. I once reported these conditions to the guard in charge, requesting that this situation be improved. I told him that it was then summer so when our clothing and bedding got wet, we could still manage, but before long it would be autumn, and the weather would be getting cold. Would it be possible, I asked him, to install glass or plastic covering on the window? But he simply replied, "This is the way it is here, even in winter," and my request vanished into dust.
The detention center did not provide any personal hygiene products for the women being held there. If a prisoner's family was not aware of this situation and didn't bring any personal items, it made things very difficult and embarrassing for the detainee as she would have no towel to wash with, no underwear to change into, and not even any toilet paper to use. I was lucky that my family often sent such items to me and so I often shared them with women whose families had not sent them such things.
But the greatest problem for us was water. The one and only special treatment that women prisoners received in the detention center was the use of one pail of hot water for the entire cell. But this one pail had to be shared by all of the 7 or 8 women in the cell at the time and there was never enough to go around. Arguments often broke out in the cell over the hot water. Sometimes there would be one or two really despotic women who wouldn't let anyone else use the hot water. While I was in the detention center, there was a female criminal called "Eldest Son's Wife" who was so fierce that she would use half of the pail of hot water for herself. The rest of us would be left with little more than a cup of water each, and sometimes none at all.
While in prison, I never suffered from beating or cursing by officials, but I was often subject to harsh words and alarming treatment from other prisoners. When Eldest Son's Wife first came into the cell she slammed each of our heads against the wall with her huge hands. We were all scared out of our wits. After that, any time you went near her, you had to be extremely cautious and let her have her way so as not to provoke her. Aside from those in our cell, all the other prisoners in the detention center were male criminals. Most of them were hoodlums, petty thieves, or vagrants. They were bored to death in the detention center, so the moment they learned the name of one of the women inmates, during the frequent blackouts they would scream out lewd words and obscenities to her. I was utterly humiliated and never dared to reply. I felt that the government was giving political prisoners an additional punishment by locking us up with these types of criminals.
Meals in the detention center were terrible. Each of the three daily meals was unhealthy and very unsanitary. You could often find mouse droppings and dirt in the rice. Little oil was used and the dried-up pieces of radish and other vegetables were often so coarse that we could barely swallow them.
As far as health care, the detention center had one doctor from whom I managed to get a few analgin-type pills for my stomach problems. Yet my biggest health problem was always gynaecological infections. I was sleeping in the same bed with several to a dozen other women and among them were quite a few who were social outcasts and several were even prostitutes. The detention center took no steps whatsoever to test or separate them. The woman who slept next to me was a middle-aged woman who had escaped poverty in the countryside by prostituting herself in the city. I was always nervous about this and afraid that I would catch some awful illness from her.
On September 30, 1989, the Shaoyang City Public Security Bureau announced my "formal arrest" and I was transferred from the Custody and Investigation Center to the women's section of Shaoyang Detention Center.
This Detention Center is also under the jurisdiction of the Public Security Bureau, but because it is the place where "formal criminals" are locked up, it is larger and more sturdily built.
Clutching my bedding, I followed the Detention Center guard and entered the women's section. It was already seriously overfilled. Thirteen or 14 women were crammed into a cell about six or seven meters long. When I entered the cell, the women prisoners were all sitting on the common bed; there wasn't any room left for me. Some of the women even said to the guard, "There's no place left for another person to sleep." The guard didn't bother answering, but locked the metal door behind me and left.
I just stood there against the door dumbstruck. I didn't know where in the cell I could safely set down my tired body. After a long while, a young peasant girl called Younger Sister Liu gave up a small piece of her "territory" for me. The space was little more than a foot wide and I could only lay on my side. There was no way to turn over at night and this caused me great suffering. The situation remained like this until a group of women criminals were released.
There was no toilet inside the women's section of this detention center. Instead, a large night-soil bucket was placed in our cell. We were only allowed to go to the courtyard bathroom to empty and rinse it out when we were let out for air. So most of the time, the cell was filled with an unbearable smell.
I spent one freezing winter in the Shaoyang Detention Center because the cell did not have a proper ceiling. When it snowed, the snow would blow through the cracks between the roof tiles. We often awoke in the morning to find a thin layer of snow dust covering our faces. If there was a blizzard outside, we'd have a flurry inside. On top of this a cold northern wind constantly blew through the two barred windows in the cell. The only way we could avoid the cold was to stay huddled under the bedding the entire winter.
At first the food at the Shaoyang Detention Center was even worse than that at the Custody and Investigation Center. There was even less oil used in the cooking and we got only a bowl of rice with a few dried up vegetable leaves on top. Not long after I arrived, the male prisoners grew so hungry that they made trouble. Apparently the prison authorities already knew that the person in charge of food was pocketing some of the funds, so they found a few reliable inmates with light sentences to assist in the food preparation and only then did it improve somewhat.
The cadres in charge of the detention center appeared to have been transferred from the military as some of them were very coarse. There was one deputy director by the name of Li who often used extremely dirty language to curse out the female prisoners. On New Year's Eve of 1990, in order to ease my feelings of homesickness, a woman economic criminal and myself were humming a song from "Dream of the Red Mansions." Right then Deputy Director Li happened to pass by on an inspection trip. Hearing us, he stood outside the window of our cell screaming ugly obscenities at us. I angrily yelled back at him that he was an "uneducated idiot." He threatened to punish me for this, but backed down when all of the women prisoners made it clear that "if one were to be handcuffed, they all should be." I then argued to his face that if we were to be penalized for singing, then he must stop insulting women whenever he opened his mouth.
Changsha Prison is the only "model prison" in Hunan open to the public. There were women there from all over the province.
Almost all the women prisoners were engaged in the prison's garment production business. Since this prison was open to the public and also made a good profit on its business, the conditions and atmosphere were relatively good. Even the food was better than in the detention centers.
Because I was one of the few educated prisoners there, not long after I arrived, I was made a teacher in the prison. Aside from my daily teaching duties, I also had to take part in other production work.
Most of the female guards at the Changsha Prison were relatively well-educated and fairly sympathetic to my case, therefore, I did not suffer too badly during my time there. Even now I still feel grateful for their kindness to me.
In a Chinese prison, the main purpose of "reform through labor" is for the prisoner to "admit one's guilt and accept the law." From the moment I entered the prison, I made it clear that I was not about to admit guilt, but I was willing to abide by the rules, work hard and teach in the prison. Nevertheless, the authorities would not go easy on me and I was not given the opportunity for parole.
It was only at about the end of January 1991, when rumors that the authorities in Beijing were releasing [student leader] Wang Dan and others connected with the 1989 Democracy Movement were heard, that the Hunan authorities began easing up on my sentence and discussing whether to give me the chance for parole.
Around March, two cadres (one male, one female) from the Changsha Municipal Intermediate Court came to speak to me. The older man's attitude was extremely serious. He spoke to me in a very official tone: "Noting that the country's situation is much better, the Party and the government have decided to give you intellectuals who participated in the disorder a generous opportunity. It depends only on your own cooperation. I hear that in prison you were willing to follow the rules, but not to admit your guilt. This is very bad. Today we want to ask you one question first. How do you feel about your counter revolutionary crime now?"
The young woman cadre sat to the side taking notes. She hinted to me that if I could say the one sentence "I am guilty of a crime" I could be released from prison right then and there. I immediately stood up and walked back to my cell without saying a word. Later the Changsha Intermediate Court sent down the decision that because of my "incorrigible obstinacy and bad attitude" I could not be released on parole.
The Ministry of Justice had initiated a type of "sentence reduction points" system in order to encourage prisoners to work hard in "reform through labor." The cadres would award a certain number of such points based on the amount of work and study a prisoner completed each month. When a prisoner amassed a set number of these points, he or she could be released before finishing his or her sentence. At the Changsha Prison I worked very hard at my teaching and work duties. Dozens of my students received certificates for passing the national "Higher Education Self-Study Examination," and I had even organized a "reform through labor newsletter" in the prison, so I had accumulated quite a few sentence reduction points. Added all up, I had enough points to reduce my sentence by one year and four months, but since I refused to admit my guilt, the prison did not even bother asking the court for a reduction of my sentence. Finally, when I had only ten more months left of my term, I complained to the provincial labor reform bureau chief when he toured the prison on an inspection. I said, "All the murderers and arsonists were allowed to use their sentence reduction points to reduce their sentences, but the points of a mere political prisoner like myself are useless. Why must you force an innocent person to admit guilt?" This bureau chief had a reputation for being relatively open-minded and not long after my appeal to him, I was released.
After my arrest, I was dismissed by my work unit. When I was released from prison in August 1991, the Shaoyang Western District Public Security Bureau immediately notified me that they would be enforcing my additional year sentence of deprivation of political rights. At the time, I was still living on the campus of Shaoyang Normal University, and the public security officers would often come to my home and question me about my situation. Although I always protested, they came to inspect my home again and again.
There was also someone who the police had installed across from my home to keep an eye on me. It was a female teacher from the foreign languages department named Zhang who had been assigned this job because her back door directly faced our front door. She would often open her back door to have a look at what was going on at our place and would sometimes even come to our doorway to see who was visiting or what cars had come. I caught her peeping on numerous occasions and always felt it was odd, but I didn't understand what she was doing until someone from the school revealed it to my husband, Fu Zhengming.
Fu Zhengming had also participated in the memorial services for the victims of the June 4 massacre. During the service he had publicly read a "Declaration of Withdrawal from the Communist Party." From that day on, he was persecuted. First of all, he lost his chances for promotion at work. He had been a lecturer in the Chinese department whose successful research work had all but ensured that he would soon be promoted to an assistant professor. But he was demoted to a teaching assistant and was still living on the meager salary and in the tiny room of a teaching assistant right up until we left China.
My son Fu Jing was an eleven year-old elementary school student when I entered prison. After June 4, 1989, the government added new lessons to the educational curriculum and elementary and middle school students were made to study the government document "On Suppressing Counterrevolution." During one such political class at my son's school, the teacher lectured on the question of "counterrevolutionary turmoil and revolt." One young student who had been influenced by the television and newspaper reports about my trial quickly made the connection and announced: "Mo Lihua is a counter-revolutionary." My son could only hang his head in shame.
I still remember seeing how my son had sat crying throughout my trial. He had been a lively talkative boy, but while I was in prison he had become quiet and reserved. The brutality of the Chinese government's political movements even cast a dark shadow over the heart of my little boy.
This article was translated by Kris Torgeson.
