The number of people detained by China’s authorities that even family members are not told for years, whether they are alive or dead, is enormous — they include my fellow Swedish citizen Gui Minhai kidnapped by China 8 1/2 years ago, as well as untold numbers of disappeared Uyghurs. Dong Yaoqiong, whose case is raised here below, is also one example from among Chinese people. This sort of targeted news blackout is a particularly cruel weapon deployed by the Chinese regime.–Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>
Source: Bitter Winter (7/8/24)
The “Ink Girl” Six Years After: Is She Alive or Dead?
Dong Yaoqiong sprayed with ink a portrait of Xi Jinping on July 4, 2018, and was taken to a psychiatric hospital. Her friends ask the CCP to prove she is still alive.
by Hu Zimo
Dong Yaoqiong and the portrait of Xi Jinping she sprayed with ink. From X.
Remember Dong Yaoqiong, the famous “Ink Girl” from Shanghai? If you don’t, this means that the CCP’s repression, which has tried to systematically erase any trace of her from the web, has been successful. We at “Bitter Winter,” however, do remember Dong Yaoqiong. Remembering may be the only way to keep her alive—unless she already died.
On July 4, 2018, Dong, a then twenty-nine-year-old woman who had come to Shanghai from Hunan and worked in a real estate agency, filmed herself in the act of spraying ink on a poster of Xi Jinping, calling for democracy, and posted the video on Twitter, which is banned in China but widely accessed through VPN, particularly by college students.
Dong was arrested a few hours after she had posted the video and later taken to a psychiatric hospital, reportedly with the complicity of her mother, who signed a statement that her daughter was mentally ill. It is rumored the mother was rewarded with a new and better home. The Ink Girl’s father, Dong Jianbiao, criticized his wife and insisted Dong Yaoqiong was not insane. As a result, the father was also arrested. On September 23, 2022, it was announced that he had died of “natural causes” in jail. His body was quickly cremated, but not before relatives had seen it, covered with bruises and other signs of violence.
Dong Jianbiao when he protested on behalf of her daughter. Social media.
After six years, where is Dong Yaoqiong? We know that in November 2019 she was released by the mental hospital and committed to the custody of her mother.
At that time, her friends and relatives claimed she had been drugged and poisoned in the psychiatric hospital. She was taken again there in May 2020 and released in July the same year.
A genuine image of Dong Yaoqiong, posted before her detention (left), and one that appeared on social media in 2020 (right), whose authenticity cannot be confirmed.
However, in February 2021 she was taken for the third time to Mental Hospital no. 3 in Zuzhou, a prefecture-level city in Hunan. Relatives believe she may still be there, but her whereabouts remain unknown. On the sixth anniversary of her protest, fellow brave netizens have asked the authorities to prove that Dong Yaoqiong is still alive.