This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.
Chinese rights activist Cheng Yuan has been released from a prison where his family say he was subjected to torture, looking 20 years older than when he was taken away five years ago, his wife told RFA Mandarin on Tuesday.
Cheng, who founded the non-government organization Changsha Funeng to campaign for the rights of people living with HIV and other disabilities, was released from Chishan Prison in the central province of Hunan on Sunday, his U.S.-based wife Shi Minglei said in an interview.
Shi said she was shocked when she saw her husband in a video call following his release.
“I was shocked when I saw him,” said Shi, who has lived in the United States with the couple’s daughter since fleeing China in 2021. “He looked 20 years older than when he was taken away.”
“He was very thin, with a very dark tan and bald, with broken teeth,” she said.
But Cheng seemed to have kept his sense of humor intact despite a grueling sentence that included a stint in the top security wing of Chishan Prison, where he was kept in a tiny cell and subjected to bright lights and chronic sleep deprivation, according to letters received by his family in July 2022.
Shi said Cheng had even joked with her about his hair loss, telling her: “Don’t tell anyone I’m bald, so they still remember me as good-looking and charming.”
But he had kept quiet about his experiences inside, she said.
“So far, he hasn’t said much about what it was like inside,” Shi said. “He needs more time to process it.”
“But he did say that the saddest thing was that he was arrested and taken away in front of my daughter, and keeps remembering how scared she was,” she said. “He was so sad when he said that.”
Cheng stood trial alongside his Changsha Funeng colleagues Liu Dazhi and Wuge Jianxiong for “subversion of state power” behind closed doors at the Changsha Intermediate People’s Court at some point between Aug. 31 and Sept. 4, 2020, rights groups said.
The trio had already been held incommunicado for nearly 18 months, and while Liu and Wuge were handed three- and two-year sentences in July 2021, no announcement was made in respect of Cheng, who has effectively served five years.
Post-release restrictions
As is common with political prisoners in China, Cheng remains under restrictions despite his release from prison, and will likely have a security detail following him wherever he goes, Shi said.
“He told me he wanted to go pay a visit to my family, but I told him not to because he would be followed there by a bunch of people, and that might frighten my family again,” she said.
Cheng told Shi he felt “very guilty” for the trouble he had caused his loved ones.
“He apologized and said he felt like he hadn’t lived up to his responsibilities as a husband and father,” she said. “He was most sorry about not being able to be with our daughter during the past five years.”
Shi said there is no guarantee that Cheng will be allowed to join his family in the United States, and could resume some form of activism, making her fear for his future.
“Chen Yuan loves his work very much, but in the current political environment he may be arrested again immediately if he starts it up again after his release,” she said.
“How can you do the thing you want to do in a big prison?” she said, in a reference to the ongoing surveillance and restrictions placed on dissidents and activists, even when they are outside a prison cell.
Former rights attorney Wang Quanzhang, who has been harrassed and faced multiple evictions since his release from prison, said it would take time for Cheng to adapt to life on the outside.
“It’s very hard to adapt after a long period of imprisonment,” Wang told RFA Mandarin on Tuesday. “When political prisoners get out, they face another big problem, which is coercion from the authorities.”
“I was so relieved to be out of prison that I didn’t really notice the restrictions, thinking little of it when they told me not to do this or that,” he said. “It was only later that I chafed under them, when I came to see them from the point of view of a free man.”
Other issues are somewhat easier to fix, Wang said, recalling his unfamiliarity with a ubiquitous payment app.
“The first time I went out, I didn’t even know how to use WeChat Pay in the supermarket,” he said. “It was very embarrassing. The cashier thought I was from another planet.”
