Guo Feixiong, a prominent Chinese human rights lawyer and activist, has gone on hunger strike since August because the authorities refused to provide him with medical treatment. Meanwhile, a rights group issued a notice about his plight to raise awareness in the international community.
Mr. Guo, also known as Yang Maodong, 56, was sentenced in May to eight years in prison for allegedly “inciting subversion of state power,” a charge that is often used to target Beijing’s critics. At the time, he went on a hunger strike for more than 100 days because the Chinese officials refused to provide him with medical treatment.
Chinese rights group Rights Protection Network, also known as Weiquanwang, issued a notice on Sept. 19, stating that Mr. Guo’s health condition is deteriorating; his weight has dropped to 91.5 pounds, and he suffers from high fevers and chills. It added that the prison denied the family’s request to transfer Mr. Guo to a health clinic for proper medical care.
Mr. Guo is a native of Hubei Province in central China. He participated in the 1989 Tiananmen Square student-led pro-democracy protests. He gained recognition for participating in the New Citizens Movement and the Southern Street Movement, defending Falun Gong adherents, and calling on corrupt Communist Party officials to disclose their assets.
In 2005, for example, Mr. Guo, as the legal consultant of Beijing Shengzhi Law Firm, provided legal advice to Taishi villagers’ attempts to remove their chief due to his alleged attempts to sell their land and embezzle the proceeds. Subsequently, Mr. Guo won the 2005 Asia Weekly’s Person of the Year and the “China Democracy Fighter Award.”
In 2015, Mr. Guo received the Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk in the Irish capital, Dublin, where his wife, Zhang Qing, and daughter, Yang Tianjiao, accepted the award on his behalf.
Persecution
In January 2021, when he was about to board a flight to visit his terminally ill wife in the United States, Mr. Guo was intercepted at Shanghai Pudong International Airport and detained by public security on the grounds of being “suspected of endangering national security.” He lost contact with the outside world for several months.
To avoid persecution from the Chinese regime’s collective punishments on family members, Ms. Zhang fled China with their two young children in February 2009, arrived in the United States two months later, and obtained refugee status in November of that year.
Residents told the media that police attacked their village with a high-pressure water gun and arrested 48 people in Taishi, China, on Sept. 12, 2005. AFP/Getty Images
While Mr. Guo repeatedly pleaded to the Chinese authorities to allow him to visit his wife, he was formally arrested by the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau on the charge of “inciting subversion to state power” on Jan. 12, 2022, two days after Ms. Zhang passed away.
Mr. Guo’s sister, Yang Maoping, told Radio Taiwan International that she felt very sorry for her sister-in-law, Ms. Zhang, who raised two children on her own for over a decade in the United States.
“It was very difficult. She was critically ill. He was arrested just when she was about to die. This is inhumane … the children were left alone without anyone caring for them,” said Ms. Yang in May 2023, when the officials were conducting a hearing on Mr. Guo’s case.
On May 12, the U.S. State Department condemned Beijing for blocking diplomats from attending Mr. Guo’s trial and the eight-year sentencing, and called on the regime “to immediately release Guo and allow him to travel to the United States to reunite with his family.”
Request Denied
Mr. Guo is currently detained in Sihui Prison in southeast Guangdong Province.
According to the Rights Protection Network, Ms. Yang asked the prison to improve Mr. Guo’s diet and provide him with medical treatment, but the prison officials ignored her request. She also filed a complaint to the Bureau of Prisons but has not received a response.
The Epoch Times contacted Sihui Prison, but a staff member refused to comment on the situation.
The Epoch Times also called the Guangdong Provincial Prison Administration Bureau to ask about the transfer request. A staff member said: “We will not tell you the prisoner’s information. If you want to know, bring your ID card and check with Sihui Prison. The prisoner can submit a transfer request to the prison police if he wants to.”
Rights defender Zhu Chengzhi, who has been under police surveillance for several years, told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times: “The outside world knows very little about Guo Feixiong’s situation. Occasionally, I can learn a little bit about it from the Internet. Because the situation in mainland China is quite special, I dare not talk to his family or other friends. I’m afraid it will cause trouble for them.”
Mr. Zhu was the first known victim of the Chinese regime’s secret jail or residential surveillance at a designated location (RSDL), which “allows the police to take targeted individuals off the street, place them in solitary confinement at secret locations, hold them incommunicado, and deny their family or anyone else knowledge of their whereabouts,” according to Peter Dahlin, founder of rights group Safeguard Defenders.
Mr. Zhu, a native of Yunnan Province and a former owner of a manganese mine, was arrested multiple times for filing petitions and supporting the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.
“I hope more people from the outside world will pay attention to Guo Feixiong and speak up for him. It would really help him,” said Mr. Zhu.
Alex Wu and Li Xi contributed to this report.
Mary Hong
Author
Mary Hong is a NTD reporter based in Taiwan. She covers China news, U.S.-China relations, and human rights issues. Mary primarily contributes to NTD's "China in Focus."
