Supporters of a Chinese civil rights campaigner, angry at what they say was an attack on him by government-hired thugs, are taking turns fasting in protest, one hunger striker and a rights watchdog said yesterday.
Yang Maodong, better known by his pen name Guo Feixiong (郭飛雄), was held for more than three months late last year for trying to help residents of a village in southern China to vote out their elected chief over allegations of corruption in a land dispute.
Yang recently evaded police surveillance and slipped back into Taishi, in Guangdong Province, despite tight security at every entrance to the village, Chinese Human Rights Defenders said in a statement.
A group of unidentified men assaulted him soon after he left a police station in the provincial capital, Guangzhou, in the early hours of Sunday, the rights watchdog said.
He had been taken to the police station when he tried to film people tailing him and his family.
AIDS activist Hu Jia and Qi Zhiyong (齊志勇), whose left leg was amputated after he was hit by a soldier's bullet during the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, joined the "relay" hunger strike yesterday in a show of support for Yang.
The pair took over from lawyer Gao Zhisheng (高智晟), who had fasted for two days, Hu said, adding that two other supporters were lined up to stage a hunger strike today.
Meanwhile, a newspaper editor who was severely beaten by police about three months ago has died from multiple injuries, his wife and former colleagues said yesterday.
"He died on February 2," said a former colleague of Wu Xianghu, who was deputy editor at the Taizhou Wanbao newspaper in Zhejiang Province.
"It must be related to the beating ... our newspaper might take action," the journalist, who declined to give his name, said. "We're all really angry about it."
Wu's wife, who did not want to give her first name but is also surnamed Wu, confirmed his death although she declined to elaborate exactly what he had died of.
"I am not able to say," she said. "It is not convenient for me to say over the phone ... in the end, it was due to his liver problems."
The official Xinhua news agency had earlier reported on the incident in which Wu was beaten.
Up to 50 police raided the newspaper's office on Oct. 20, a day after it published an article criticizing traffic police over charging arbitrary fees for electrical bicycle licenses.
Up to eight police beat and kicked Wu, before hurling him out of his office and bundling him into a police car, Xinhua reported the next day.
The Xinhua report said Wu had a liver transplant two years before and the beating caused severe damage to his liver and that he sustained multiple injuries.
Also yesterday, a Chinese Cabinet official said that the country will rein in the sale of farms allocated for property development during this year.
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