Torture

I’ve read about a dozen China prison memoirs over the years, and nothing has affected me the way Liao Yiwu’s prison diary has, with its detailed and graphic descriptions of prison life. I attribute the impact of this book to Liao’s skills as a poet, his writer’s nose for detail, and his willingness...

[Ni Rong] The “Strike-Hard” campaign launched by the central government in the early 1980s led to the imprisonment of many innocent people. Fujian citizen Ni Rong was detained at the scene of an arrest of a thief. He spent four days in intensive care after being tortured. He was not allowed to hire...

(English Translation by Human Rights in China) On January 18, Hu Jintao will visit the United States, where, among other topics, the two governments will discuss human rights issues. Because of China’s continuous acts of “enforced disappearance,” “torture,” and other acts against dissidents, China’...

Psychiatric detention of dissidents and the rise of the Ankang system Although in recent years a handful of cases in which individuals were incarcerated in psychiatric institutions for their political activism have become known, it was thought that China had not systematically adopted the...