China frees man jailed in 1989 for throwing paint on Mao Zedong portrait

BEIJING – A man who was jailed for throwing paint on Mao Zedong's portrait in Beijing's Tiananmen Square during pro-democracy protests in 1989 has been released after nearly 17 years in prison, his family said Thursday.

Yu Dongyue's release early Wednesday came ahead of a U.S. visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao in April. It did not appear to be meant as a gesture to Washington: Yu served his full sentence, unlike other prisoners who have released early in connection with diplomatic trips.

“This has absolutely nothing to do with Hu Jintao's visit,” said John Kamm, director of the San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation, which studies Chinese prisons.

There are at least 70, and possibly as many as 300, prisoners still serving sentences for convictions stemming from the 1989 protests, Kamm said.

Yu, 38, returned to his family home in Shegang, a city in the southern province of Hunan, his brother and father said.

“His health is OK, but mentally he is traumatized,” his brother, Yu Xiyue, said by phone from Shegang.

Yu was one of three men who received long prison terms for throwing black and red paint on the 30-foot-tall portrait of Mao that overlooks Tiananmen Square.

They attacked the portrait on May 23, 1989, as thousands of student-led protesters marched through the square.

The three men were grabbed by angry students who turned them over to police. The students said they opposed vandalism.

Mao, who founded China's communist government and died in 1976, is still revered as a patriotic figure even though millions suffered in repeated political upheavals that he launched.

Yu Dongyue was convicted, along with Yu Zhijian and Lu Decheng, of “counterrevolutionary destruction and counterrevolutionary incitement.”

A court said Yu Dongyue also tacked a poster of “reactionary slogans” on the former imperial gate where the portrait hangs.

Yu Dongyue was sentenced to 20 years but later received two sentence reductions. His brother said his parents visited him once or twice a year in prison during his captivity.

Yu Zhijian, a teacher, was sentenced to life in prison but released in January 2001. He is not related to Yu Dongyue.

Lu Decheng was sentenced to 16 years in prison but released after a decade. He went to Thailand, where he has applied for refugee status.

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Chinese jail reduces man to madness

GEOFFREY YORK

Globe and Mail Update

Beijing — It was one of the most famous symbols of the Tiananmen Square protests: an angry splash of red paint hurled at the massive portrait of Mao Zedong that dominates the entrance to Beijing's Forbidden City.

It was a defiant gesture that infuriated the Communist rulers. And so, when tanks crushed the pro-democracy protests on June 4, 1989, some of the harshest punishments were imposed on the three men who had dared to deface the image of Chairman Mao.

The last of the paint-throwers was finally freed from prison yesterday a shattered and mentally ill 38-year-old man. The prisoner, Yu Dongyue, was driven insane by 16 years of beatings, torture and solitary confinement. He is reported to be incoherent and unable to communicate.

“He doesn't recognize me and we can't understand each other,” his brother told Reuters News Agency last night after he brought Mr. Yu to the home of their parents in Hunan province.

Mr. Yu, a former journalist, is the last of the major Tiananmen figures to be released from prison, according to human-rights activists. But another 74 lesser-known Tiananmen protesters are still in prison, the activists say.

Mr. Yu's long ordeal can be traced back to May 19, 1989, when he and two friends decided to join the pro-democracy protests. They hopped on a train to Beijing and chose the famous Mao portrait as their target.

On May 23, they prepared for their dramatic protest by loading red paint into empty eggshells and hurling them at the Mao portrait, leaving it splattered.

Mr. Yu and his two friends — school teacher Yu Zhijian and bus driver Lu Decheng — were detained by the pro-democracy student protesters, who wanted to distance themselves from the actions of the three men. They were eventually turned over to the Chinese security services, and lengthy prison terms were imposed on them.

Yu Dongyue was given a 20-year prison sentence for “sabotage” and “counter-revolutionary propaganda.” He was also criticized for his “very avant-garde views on art.”

According to a Hong Kong report, he was beaten by the Chinese police and struck with electric batons. He was also beaten by fellow inmates who were reportedly encouraged by the police to attack him. He spent two years in solitary confinement in a tiny cell of two square metres.

In 1992, he wrote on a prison blackboard the words “re-evaluate June 4” and “Down with Deng Xiaoping,” the Chinese leader at the time, which led to further brutal beatings, according to a human-rights group.

The other two paint-throwers spent nine years in jail and were released in 1998. Mr. Lu fled from China in 2004 and slipped across the border to Thailand, where he sought to gain international support for Mr. Yu.

Within a few weeks he was detained by Thai police, but he requested refugee status from the Bangkok office of the United Nations refugee commission.

The Chinese government demanded that he be sent back, but a new report says he will move to Canada next month in a UN resettlement program.

A spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa would not confirm or deny the report, but if true it could provoke a diplomatic battle between Canada and China, which would object strongly if Mr. Lu is not sent back to China.

Mr. Lu and four other people visited Mr. Yu in prison in 2001. “He had a totally dull look in his eyes, and he kept repeating words over and over again, as if he were chanting a mantra,” Mr. Lu told Radio Free Asia after the visit. “He didn't recognize anyone.” He said his old friend had been “tortured to the point of psychosis.”

By last year, Mr. Yu was reported to be babbling incoherently and consuming his own feces and urine. “He has become deranged,” Yu Zhijian told the South China Morning Post last year. “He can't have normal conversations with people. He can't take care of himself. He talks to himself all day long. . . . His nerve is totally broken and his health is terrible. Few prisoners in China are as bad as he is.”

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