Imprisoned Liaoyang Labour Activist, Xiao Yunliang, Transferred to a Remote Prison with Inadequate Winter Heating
The imprisoned Liaoyang worker activist, Xiao Yunliang, has been transferred to a prison with severely inadequate heating facilities in a mountainous rural area in the distant vicinity of the north-eastern city of Shenyang, where temperatures are currently around minus 20 degree Celsius, his wife told China Labour Bulletin.
Xiao's wife, Su Anhua, was informed on 6 January by prison authorities from Shenyang No. 2 Prison, where Xiao was previously detained, that her husband had been moved a few days earlier to Kangjiashan Prison, located some 40 kilometres from Shenyang City. This is his eleventh such transfer between prisons since he was first detained on 20 March 2002. The mountainous location means that winter conditions there are even harsher than in most other parts of Liaoning Province, and the heavy snowfalls make it extremely difficult for Xiao's family to visit him at the new prison.
Su Anhua, sobbing and unable to hold back her tears, told CLB that when she asked the Shenyang No. 2 Prison authorities why Xiao had been moved yet again, she was told it was not their decision but had been "ordered by the Liaoning Provincial Prison Management Bureau." Su added, however, that according to the prison authorities, her husband's performance in the prison had been "satisfactory."
Xiao Yunliang suffers from a wide range of serious medical conditions, leaving him in a constantly poor state of health. His various diagnosed and reported ailments include: cystic disease of the kidney, arteriosclerosis of the aorta, intrahepatic duct stones, chronic gastritis and conjunctivitis in his left eye. However, prison authorities have so far provided him with no medication or medical treatment, other than an operation in August 2004 to correct a cataract in his right eye.
Despite repeated public appeals from the international labour movement, the prison authorities have still failed to improve conditions of detention for Xiao and his fellow Liaoyang worker activist, Yao Fuxin, who is serving a seven-year sentence at Lingyuan Prison elsewhere in the same province. On 21 December 2004, China Labour Bulletin last reported on Xiao's and Yao's deteriorating health situations as winter set in, and on 21 January 2005, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) wrote to President Hu Jintao and the PRC Minister of Justice, Zhang Fusen, requesting the immediate release of both labour activists on compassionate medical grounds. (See: Fears Arise over Health Situation of Imprisoned Liaoyang Labour Activists, and ICFTU Calls for Immediate Release of Liaoyang Two on Medical Grounds.) The Chinese authorities have so far made no response to these appeals.
Xiao and Yao were first detained in March 2002 for leading some 30,000 laid-off workers from the Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy Plant and other local factories in large-scale street protests against alleged managerial corruption and many months of unpaid wages. In June 2003, Xiao was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, while Yao was given a seven-year prison sentence, both on trumped-up charges of political "subversion."
As in most other prisons in China, the prisoners at Kangjiashan are required to perform hard physical labour, such as hammering and crushing rocks. They are allowed only one family visit of 30 minutes duration each month, and all conversations with their relatives are closely monitored and restricted by the prison guards.
The fact that Xiao Yunliang has reportedly been exempted from performing manual labour at the prison, something that is only very rarely allowed, provides a clear indication of how serious his health situation has now become. He is receiving three meals a day – two of mantou (wheat buns) and the other of rice, but since he has a stomach illness that only allows him to digest rice, he is effectively receiving only one meal a day. Moreover, the temperature in the Kangjiashan region has now fallen to below minus 20 degree Celsius, but heating facilities in the prison cells are said to be grossly inadequateand each inmate has been provided with only a prisoner's uniform and one sweater to keep out the intense cold. Finally, in a seemingly gratuitous act of official harshness, the families of those held at Kangjiashan Prison are reportedly forbidden, under prison regulations, from bringing any food, clothes or medicines to their imprisoned relatives.
Since Xiao Yunliang's transfer to Kangjiashan Prison in early January, his wife and daughter have made repeated visits both to their local government in Liaoyang City and to the provincial prison authorities in Shenyang demanding that Xiao be allowed to receive urgently-needed medical treatment and that his conditions of detention be improved. They have been variously informed, however, either that the competent officials were "not in the office" that day, or that "nothing can be done to improve [Xiao's] situation."
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