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China's 'youngest detainee' decries treatment of her father

Zhang Anni says father was tortured for his opposition to government
China's 'youngest detainee' decries treatment of her father

Picture: AFP Photo/Ed Jones

Published: May 09, 2014 05:52 AM GMT
Updated: May 08, 2014 07:10 PM GMT

Dubbed as “China’s youngest prisoner of conscience,” Zhang Anni and her sister Ruli have voiced their opposition to the government’s vicious treatment of their father, who resists the communist party.

In her first interview given in English, Anni told CNA May 5 that if she could say something to the Chinese government, “(I would say) to release our father, because he didn’t do anything wrong.”

Now residing in the California home of women’s rights activist Reggie Littlejohn, the founder and president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, Anni ,11, and her elder sister Ruli,19, arrived in the United States in September, following pleas from their father to get them out of China.

Littlejohn originally met Zhang Anni through her organization, which is dedicated to fighting gendercide, forced abortions and sexual slavery in China, during a radio interview after the Chinese government had detained her after school because of her father’s opposition of the communist party.

Anni’s father, Zhang Lin, has already served 13 years in prison on subversion charges for his political activities, and has been imprisoned again following comments he made during a demonstration last April in protest of the government for preventing Anni from attending class.

Recalling the day that she was detained, Anni said that Feb. 27 of last year “my teacher told me to go to the principal’s office” after school, so “I went to the principal’s office and I saw four men standing there.”

Explaining how the principle told her to “go with the four uncles,” who said they were friends of father, Anni noted how the men said that “Your father told us to pick you up and we’ll send you home.”

“Because they said they were friends of my father, I believed them and I went with them. But they took me to the police office, and that time I was very scared because I was afraid they would do something to me.”

Anni explained that she was made to sit in a “meeting room” for four hours, and that “in those four hours I was alone.”

“My dad was not there so they left a person to watch me. And after four hours I asked when I could go home and when I could see my dad, and they said ‘soon, soon, your dad is coming.’”

However, she said, when her father finally arrived at 10 p.m., the men told her that he was still not there, so “they lied to us. They said my dad wasn’t there, but actually my dad was there.”

Noting that when she attempted to get up and go out of the room, the man blocked her so she could not leave, Anni went on to describe how at 11 p.m. she was escorted out of the building, but instead of being set free, she was taken to another police station “until the next day at 3 p.m.”

“So (from when) I got out from school until the next day, I had been detained 24 hours.”

The girls also recounted the violent treatment of their father, who they said has been brutally beaten to the point of being in a wheelchair, and was denied medical treatment.

“We are so angry and worried about him. Because his health has problems right now, it’s very serious, and also he didn’t do anything wrong,” Ruli expressed, observing how “they beat my father very hard and they tried to put our father with…murderers, some very dangerous people, and the guards wanted the other prisoners to beat my father without reason.”

“And after torture they didn’t give my father medical treatment, they just left him alone. So my father’s body is very bad after the torment,” she continued, recalling how sometimes when she was away at college, Anni was left to care for their father, who at times could not move.

“She would cook and try to take care of my father even when she was 8 and 9.”

When asked what they would say to their father if given the chance to send him a message, Anni explained that “I would say don’t worry. Don’t worry about me because I’m very good and to take care of himself, and I hope soon you will get out of jail and come with us.”

Full Story: China's youngest detainee decries torture of father

Source:Catholic News Agency

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