Mother of Rape Victim Sentenced to Hard Labor, Chinese Blogosphere Explodes in Indignation – Hao Hao Report
Street vendor Tang Hui and her family’s life took a tragic turn in October 2006, when her 11-year old daughter went missing in her hometown Yongzhou, a small city in Hunan Province. After three months of tireless search, Tang found out that the fifth-grader was repeatedly raped, beaten and forced into prostitution in a nearby spa center. This outrage made national headlines in China in 2007 and 2008. In 2008, the local court handed out death sentences to two defendants accused of rape and sex trafficking, life sentences to two accomplices, and long jail sentences to two others accused of rape.
The tragedy did not end there. The defendants appealed. Tang and her family, on the other hand, believed that the sentencing was too lenient on the defendants who escaped the death sentence and the justice system failed to punish certain police officers who did not do their jobs or tried to cover up the crime. What’s more, one of those convicted sought to reduce his sentence based on “meritorious conduct” that the local police may have helped fabricate. As a result, Tang has continued to seek justice for her daughter and air her grievances for more than five years. (In June 2012, a higher court handed out two death sentences, four life sentences and a 15-year jail sentence to those involved.)
On August 2, however, Tang was sentenced to 18 months of hard labor for “disruption of social order” because she slept in a court room for 15 days, tried to block cars and gates at various public institutions and distributed leaflets about the case during the course of her appeal. Tang’s “labor re-education” sentence, as is often the case in China, was handed down by the police and was not subject to judicial due process.
