Chinese poet Xu Na and her painting. Xu, a practitioner of the banned spiritual movement, Falun Gong, has been jailed for eight years for critical posts about the Chinese government's response to Covid-19 pandemic. (Photo: Weibo via Bitter Winter)
A court in the Chinese capital Beijing has upheld an eight-year jail term for poet and artist Xu Na for criticizing the communist government's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic on social media.
The Beijing Second Intermediate Court confirmed the jail term for Xu on May 18, which was first handed down on Jan. 19 last year, and was harsher than those punished in similar cases because she has been a practitioner of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, Bitter Winter magazine reported.
Xu, 55, is also known for acts of defiance and her pro-democracy stance that have angered the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). She participated in the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 when she was a student at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute (now the Communication University of China). The pro-democracy rally ended in brutal suppression by the communist regime.
The atrocities in June 1989, saw Xu Na become a freelance painter and poet. She married a like-minded musician, Yu Zhou. In the quest for the spiritual meaning of their lives, the couple joined Falun Gong in the mid-1990s.
Falun Gong, a combination of traditional Chinese spirituality, health practices and moral philosophy, is a spiritual movement that started in China in the early 1990s by Li Hongzhi.
Initially, the movement was tolerated by the CCP and attracted millions of followers in China and beyond.
However, the movement fell out with the CCP following a large protest against media slander in April 1999.
Falun Gong’s growing popularity and show of strength alarmed the CCP leadership who listed it as a “heretic cult” and banned it on July 20, 1999.
Since then, members have been subjected to persecution including surveillance, arbitrary detention, torture and extrajudicial killings, and other abuses.
The suppression forced leaders and members of the movement to move underground, and many have fled the country since then.
Xu and her husband were first arrested during the 1999 crackdown and were released. They were rearrested in 2001. Xu was sentenced to five years and remained in jail until 2006, Bitter Winter reported.
Despite the ordeal, Xu continued to practice Falun Gong. She and her husband were arrested for a third time on Jan. 26, 2008.
Yu Zhou, a diabetic, died in prison following a hunger strike lasting eleven days, the authorities claimed. Xu dismissed the claim and alleged he was killed in jail.
Xu was sentenced to another three years in jail and was released in 2011.
After that, she maintained a low profile until the Covid-19 pandemic struck. She took to social media to challenge the lies by authorities regarding their response to the deadly virus outbreak.
Xu was arrested together with 12 other Falun Gong members who were accused of posting “non-official” information on the pandemic on social media platforms.
If her sentence is not reduced, Xu is likely to be in jail until 2028, when she will turn 60.
Bitter Winter reported that Xu has been routinely tortured in jail by security officials who also encouraged other inmates to kick her and spit on her.
The abuses failed to break her spirit so she has continued to write poems.
The following poem has been translated by the magazine:
"When all that I have, including my husband, has been taken from me, am I still happy?
I have my happiness too, even extreme happiness.
With my hands and feet tied up, I felt freedom. The freedom of the soul.
Thirty centimeters above the ground, or below the knees of other people, I felt dignity.
With my hair covered with other people’s sticky, thick saliva, I felt cleanliness… Happiness.
Because there is power rising from within. All that I have is what no one can ever take away from me.”
In a message, she reminded people of conscience around the world they must speak up against all forms of injustice.
“Every case of injustice happening in this world is highly relevant to you, even if it is far away from you, because it always tortures your conscience,” she wrote.
* This report has been edited for accuracy since its publication
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