A dissident who had been one of China’s longest-serving political prisoners until his release this month plans to sue the government for illegally detaining him and is suffering severe mental problems, his wife and son said yesterday.
The ethnic Mongol activist, Hada, had spent much of the last two decades behind bars, including the last four years in an extra-judicial “black jail.”
Many Mongols in China go by just one name.
He says he was tortured while in detention and has been threatened since he was let out.
Hada was tried in 1996 and jailed for 15 years for separatism, spying and supporting the Southern Mongolian Democratic Alliance, which sought greater rights.
Decades of migration by members of the Han community have left Chinese Mongols a minority in their own land. Officially, they make up less than a fifth of Inner Mongolia’s almost 24 million people.
The government fears ethnic unrest in border areas and keeps a tight rein on Inner Mongolia, just as it does on Tibet and Xinjiang in the west, even though the region is supposed to have a large measure of autonomy.
Hada’s wife, Xinna, said the lawsuit would focus not only on overturning Hada’s “illegal detention” for the past four years, but also her conviction for illegally operating a business and their son Uiles’ drug conviction, charges the family denies.
However, Hada first needs time to get used to life outside jail.
“He has the typical symptoms of Stockholm syndrome,” Xinna said from Inner Mongolia’s capital Hohhot by telephone, referring to a condition where people who have been held captive sympathize with those holding them.
Hada spoke briefly on the telephone, to say that he was in poor shape and “didn’t know anything about society” now that he had been set free.
Uiles said that his father had been kept in solitary confinement during his time in the black jail and plied with alcohol, adding that over the entire 19 years of his detention he had been given almost no opportunity to speak his native Mongol language.
“He won’t see anyone,” Uiles said. “He’s trying to avoid everything. He was terrorized while in jail.”
The family also has almost no money, Xinna said, which could affect their chances of being able to take their case to court.
However, she added she took encouragement from a court this month exonerating a Mongol teenager who was executed in 1996 for the rape and murder of a woman.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS