Advocate Protesting China's One-Child Policy Loses Appeal To Two-and-a-Half-Year Prison Sentence

Human rights advocate Mao Hengfeng, who has protested for the past 19 years against China's one-child-per-family policy, lost an appeal against a two-and-a-half year prison sentence for allegedly breaking two lamps while in a detention house in Shanghai, the advocacy group Human Rights in China said on Tuesday, the AP/International Herald Tribune reports (AP/International Herald Tribune, 4/17). Mao in 1988 was fired from her job at a Shanghai soap factory after becoming pregnant with a second child. She carried her pregnancy to term despite pressure from the government to have an abortion. After Mao became pregnant again, she sued the soap factory for firing her, and the presiding judge told her he would rule in her favor if she aborted her third pregnancy. She then aborted her pregnancy at seven months gestation, but the court ruled against her, saying that the factory had a right to dismiss her because she violated China's family planning policy. Mao in April 2004 was sentenced to 18 months in a prison labor camp for refusing to stop protesting the government's family planning policy. According to Human Rights in China, Chinese authorities in January 2005 added three months to the sentence, and Mao allegedly has been tortured while in custody because of her protests. However, China's State Council in a January 2005 statement said Mao's incarceration "had nothing to do with the family planning policy" and her firing from the soap factory was because she missed 16 days of work, not because she was pregnant for a second time. Mao in January was sentenced to an additional two-and-a-half years in prison for breaking two lamps while in a detention house in Shanghai, according to Human Rights in China (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 1/18). The group in a statement said that Mao's appeal to the sentence was denied "following a 10-minute session at which only her judgment was read." Mao's attorney was not permitted to present evidence on the value of the lamps to show "the disproportionate nature of her sentence," according to the statement (AP/International Herald Tribune, 4/17).

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