Mao Hengfeng has been repeatedly detained for her work defending women’s reproductive rights and victims of forced evictions in China. She is currently serving 18 months in a “Re-education Through Labour” camp in Anhui province. She has been tortured many times.

In July 2010, at an administrative appeal against her punishment, Mao Hengfeng testified that she has often been beaten while in the camp. She has said that the camp’s officers had instructed other inmates to attack her. On one occasion, they hit her on the head twice with a chair, leaving a scar over her right eyelid. In another attack, they lifted her up, pulled her arms and legs, bent her lower back and then threw her on the floor, causing pain to her lower back, waist and kidneys.

Mao Hengfeng was assigned to 18 months’ “Re-education Through Labour” for “disturbing social order,” after protesting outside Beijing Municipal Intermediate Court on 25 December 2009, in support of human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, who had been on trial that day. In October 2010, Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mao Hengfeng has been detained repeatedly since 2004, and often her family have not been allowed to visit her. They have since found out that it was at these times that she was being tortured.

Sign a petition to the Chinese authorities:

• Calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Mao Hengfeng.
• Asking for a guarantee that Mao Hengfeng will not be tortured or ill-treated while she is in custody.
• Calling for a full and impartial investigation into all allegations of torture and other ill-treatment, and that those responsible be brought to justice.
• Asking that Mao Hengfeng be allowed access to her family and any medical treatment that she may require.