Advocate Protesting China's One-Child Policy Sentenced To Two-and-a-Half-Year Prison Sentence For Breaking Lamps, Group Says

Human rights advocate Mao Hengfeng, who has protested for the past 19 years against China's one-child-per-family policy, recently was sentenced to an additional two-and-a-half years in prison for breaking two lamps while in a detention house in Shanghai, the advocacy group Human Rights in China said on Wednesday, the Agence France-Presse reports (Agence France-Presse, 1/16). Mao in 1988 was fired from her job at a Shanghai soap factory after becoming pregnant with a second child. She carried her pregnancy to term despite pressure from the government to have an abortion. After Mao became pregnant again, she sued the soap factory for firing her, and the presiding judge told her he would rule in her favor if she aborted her third pregnancy. She then aborted her pregnancy at seven months gestation, but the court ruled against her, saying that the factory had a right to dismiss her because she violated China's family planning policy. Mao in April 2004 was sentenced to 18 months in a prison labor camp for refusing to stop protesting the government's family planning policy. According to Human Rights in China, Chinese authorities in January 2005 added three months to the sentence, and Mao allegedly has been tortured while in custody because of her protests. China's State Council in a January 2005 statement said Mao's incarceration "had nothing to do with the family planning policy" and her firing from the soap factory was because she missed 16 days of work, not because she was pregnant for a second time (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 1/11/05). According to a Human Rights in China release, Mao was being held in a detention house in Shanghai with six other men and women and broke two lamps while protesting the conditions. Shanghai court sentenced Mao to prison for "intentionally destroying property" according to the release. The group "condemn[ed]" the sentence for being "disproportionate to the crime" of which Mao was convicted, adding, "The handling of this case by the public security and judicial authorities raises strong concerns of retaliation against individuals invoking their constitutionally protected right to petition the authorities" (Agence France-Presse, 1/16).

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