Lawyer Wang Qingpeng told The Epoch Times on Oct. 1 that after learning about the death of Dong Jianbiao, she and her friends on Twitter realized that the outside world had stopped following Dong’s situation since his arrest. She believes that’s why officials dared to retaliate against him so recklessly.
Dong, the father of “Ink Girl” Dong Yaoqiong, was beaten to death in Chaling prison in Hunan Province on Sept. 23, according to various international media outlets. His body was cremated the next day.
A Hunan citizen named Chen Siming was arrested for sharing on Twitter the news that Dong had died. Hunan journalist Hu Jianlue was arrested for attending Dong’s funeral.
In 2018, Dong Yaoqiong posted a video on Chinese social media of her criticizing the Chinese communist regime and splashing ink on a poster of regime leader Xi Jinping in Shanghai. In response, authorities detained her in psychiatric hospitals three times and injected her with an unknown substance that triggered changes in her behavior. Currently, her whereabouts are unknown.
Her father, who was a mine worker, had been searching for her and trying to rescue her while seeking to draw the world’s attention to her plight.
Power of International Attention
“On Sept. 25, I saw that many people on Twitter were retweeting the news of political prisoners facing retaliation from the Chinese authorities after the international community stopped paying attention to them,” Wang told The Epoch Times. “So I posted the ‘Appeal to Overseas Twitter Users to Each Focus on One Chinese Political Prisoner’ letter on Twitter, calling on the international community to pay attention to detained political prisoners’ situations in China.”The appeal was liked and forwarded by many Twitter users, with 130,000 views.
A China Without Political Prisoners
At present, the activity mainly focuses on detained political prisoners who spoke out for human rights, Wang said.“Our goal is that there will be no more political prisoners in China, everyone can speak freely, and China can have a government that is legally supervised by the people,” she said.
“Yesterday, a friend on Twitter, Esme Chen, told me that paying attention to political prisoners is not just about them, but also for ourselves and the next generation,” she added. “If the CCP’s policy spreads to the whole world, then it will make our escape from communist China meaningless.
“Now, the CCP authorities have deleted and silenced the voices of all those dissidents who have a backbone, leaving only indifferent, insensitive, and abusive posts all over the internet, making the world think that we Chinese are all like this. In fact, these political prisoners and people on the Twitter group who follow their situation are the true representation of the Chinese people.”
“Esme Chen is currently posting the case of detained political prisoner Wang Linlin. I am updating the information about the case of Ji Xiaolong, and some people are tweeting the cases of Tan Binglin, Zhang Zhan, Tang Jitian, Wu Tu, Li Qiaochu, Chang Weiping, Xuebing, and others,” Wang said.
Ji Xiaolong was arrested by authorities for the second time on Sept. 23 for opposing the COVID-19 lockdowns. Ji was previously jailed for 3 1/2 years for openly criticizing the regime before being released in February.
The Twitter focus group said Ji’s health condition in prison is concerning, since he hasn’t yet recovered from his previous time in detention.
