Wang Wanxing: Activist forcibly re-committed to psychiatric facility

Veteran activist Wang Wanxing has been forcibly re-committed to a psychiatric facility. Wang had already spent over seven years confined to Ankang Hospital, a psychiatric institution run by the Beijing Public Security Bureau, after a 1992 attempt to unfurl a banner in Tiananmen Square, commemorating the June Fourth Massacre and calling for a reversion of the verdict against the 1989 democracy movement. Authorities told his wife that he was suffering from "political monomania."

On August 19, 1999 Wang was released for a three-month "trial period." As that time came to an end, Wang voiced plans to hold a press conference to speak out about his confinement and the conditions that he endured. Consequently, eight public security officers took Wang from his home at noon on November 23, 1999 and re-committed him to Ankang Hospital. Authorities have continued to press Wang's wife to admit to his illness, but she has insisted that he is mentally stable.

HRIC is in possession of a one-hour tape made of a November 20, 1999 conversation that HRIC President Liu Qing had with Wang, in which Wang rationally speaks of his detention and his belief that he would soon be re-confined.


Further Information:

• New York Times Archive, "A China Dissident's Ordeal: Back to the Mental Hospital," by Erik Eckholm, November 30, 1999