Beijing – A Chinese journalist was freed Wednesday after spending nearly 17 years in prison for splattering paint on a portrait of Mao Tse-tung during the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, a family member and a human-rights advocate said.
Yu Dongyue, 38, and two friends had hurled eggs filled with red paint at the famous painting of Mao, which still stares at Tiananmen Square from across the street, where it hangs above the entrance to the Forbidden City.
Yu and his family are expected to reunite in Hunan province today, but his younger brother said the family is deeply concerned about Yu’s mental health.
“He no longer recognizes me,” said Yu Xiyue, a younger brother who made a prison visit last year.
In 2004, Reporters Without Borders, the journalism advocacy group, said Yu had gone insane as a result of being tortured in prison.
Human-rights groups have long made Yu’s release a priority.
China once made it a practice to release a prominent prisoner in advance of an important state visit, and President Hu Jintao is scheduled to visit the United States in April.
But John Kamm, the human-rights campaigner who had long lobbied on behalf of Yu, stopped short of giving China credit for leniency.
He said Yu’s original 20-year sentence – which had twice been reduced – concluded Tuesday.
“It’s an early release only in the sense that he was originally sentenced to 20 years,” said Kamm, whose San Francisco- based Dui Hua Foundation serves as an advocate for the release of Chinese political prisoners. “Frankly, I was hoping they would commute. In my opinion, this is a fairly minor gesture, if one at all.”
Kamm said that Yu’s return to society would be tightly restricted, as is the case with all freed political prisoners.
He will not have any political rights in China and will be forbidden from working at a university or any state-owned enterprises. He is also forbidden from speaking to news organizations.
“He will be, for the rest of his life, a targeted person,” Kamm said.
Yu worked as a reporter and art critic for the Liuyang News before his arrest.
In 2004, Lu Decheng, one of the two friends arrested with Yu, visited him in prison and told Radio Free Asia that he was “barely recognizable.” Yu had “a totally dull look in his eyes, kept repeating words over and over as if he was chanting a mantra,” Lu said, adding: “He had a big scar on the right side of his head.
“A fellow prisoner said Yu had been tied to an electricity pole and left out in the hot sun for several days. He was also kept in solitary confinement for two years and that was what broke him.”
Unlike Yu, both Lu and the third man, Yu Zhijian, were paroled for their part in the egg- throwing incident.
Lu, who fled China in 2004, is now in Thailand awaiting final approval for resettlement in Canada, Kamm said. Yu Zhijian was reportedly rearrested this month as part of a police roundup of dissidents conducting a hunger strike.