Chinese woman who splashed ink on Xi poster resurfaces
向習近平肖像潑墨的中國女性現身
| 'Ink Girl' says she was released from mental hospital, placed under surveillance
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Video surfaced on Monday (Nov. 30) showing a Chinese streamer announcing that she had been released from a mental hospital and has been subject to ongoing government surveillance after her disappearance two years ago when she splashed paint on a poster of Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平). During a live broadcast online at 6:40 a.m. on July 4, 2018, in front of the Hainan Airlines office in Shanghai's Lujiazui, female Chinese streamer Dong Yaoqiong (董瑤瓊), who goes by the Twitter handle "feefeefly," announced that she was protesting Xi Jinping's "authoritarian tyranny" and the Chinese Communist Party's "mind control persecution." She then splashed black ink on the portrait of the portly Chinese dictator and shouted "Oppose Xi Jinping authoritarian tyranny!" By 3 p.m. that day, she posted a tweet saying, "There are a group of uniformed men were outside my door. I will change my clothes and go out shortly. I have committed no crime. It is the organization that has harmed me that has committed the crime." Her Twitter account then quickly disappeared, her video was no longer accessible, and she was not heard from again for two years. On Monday (Nov. 30), Dong, who is now known by many as "Ink Girl" for her bold act of defiance, suddenly appeared in a video on Twitter. In the video, she says that she has been released from a psychiatric facility for the second time this year and was assigned to work in a local government department. She said that it was a job only in name and alleged that, in fact, it was a way for authorities to surveil her. Dong said her movements are tightly restricted and her job consists of answering the phone and typing up documents. Dong announced that she is taking to Twitter because "I don't fear them, I'm not afraid of them." She said that if they lock her up in a hospital again, she will accept her fate. However, she declared that she is striving for her freedom, including her freedom to choose her job and friends. She stressed that all of her freedom has been restricted. Whenever she meets with a person, she claims that authorities will make phone calls and question her about the encounter. Dong said that she has not even been able to contact her father and that it was activist Ou Biaofeng (歐彪峰) who informed her that her father had barely escaped death in a collapsed mine in Yuanjiangshan, Hunan. Becoming noticeably distraught, Dong says that she would rather die than live this way. She said she is no longer able to handle the stress of being constantly monitored. She then thanked her followers for watching and said that she does not know what the consequences will be of her post, but she is prepared to suffer them. Denying that she was suffering from any form of mental illness, she said that before she had been detained she had been working at a stable job in Shanghai. She claimed that her coworkers could vouch for her as having a normal mental state. Dong said that she has had a clear state of mind throughout and began to explain that a psychiatrist in the hospital apparently was even questioning her need to be there when the footage suddenly cuts off. The video itself was apparently taken down from Twitter. However, the Twitter account Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) was able to download the video before it was taken down and reposted it online that same day. On Tuesday (Dec. 1), it posted it again with an English explanation of Dong's plight. |
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| Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer | |
| 2020-12-02 |
