21/12/21
A prominent Chinese rights attorney believed detained after he planned to attend an event on Human Rights Day is once more being subjected to torture and mistreatment in detention, according to one of his friends. Tang Jitian has been incommunicado since texting friends a couple of hours before the Dec. 10 event was due to start that it was “not safe” to attend, with friends and fellow attorneys saying he has been subjected to a forced disappearance. Tang’s friend Zhao Zhongyuan, a U.S.-based traditional Chinese medicine doctor, said he is being forcibly deprived of sleep, as well as beatings. “They won’t let him sleep at all, and they are hanging him up and beating him, very similar to [the way he was treated] 10 years ago,” Zhao told RFA on Tuesday. “Judging from the photo, it looks similar to the torture he suffered [in 2014].” “And his state of health is a whole lot worse than it was 10 years ago,” he said. RFA was unable to verify Zhao’s report independently. Zhao has previously said Tang was already at the point of physical and mental collapse when he disappeared, which came after he was prevented from traveling to Japan to visit his 24-year-old daughter Qiqi, who is in a coma due to complications from tuberculosis. “[The authorities] have said that if there is ongoing attention on his case, they will send him back to his birth city [of Jilin],” Zhao said. “A source told me that I should stop speaking out for him.” […] https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/tortured-12212021124026.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_Jitian
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Police are putting pressure on Tang’s friends and family not to speak out about his treatment.
