We speak with Human Rights Watch researcher Milena Ansari about the organization’s new report detailing the torture of Palestinian medical workers in Israeli prisons. HRW spoke with eight doctors, paramedics and nurses who were picked up in Gaza before being transferred to the notorious Sde Teiman camp and other facilities, where they say they suffered beatings, starvation, humiliation, electric shocks and other forms of abuse. The men also describe threats of sexual violence during brutal interrogations and seeing another prisoner bleeding after being gang-raped with an M16 rifle by three soldiers. The findings track with other reports from researchers and survivors, and HRW has called on the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel for its attacks on healthcare workers. “We’re really ringing the alarm about the situation inside the Israeli custody and detention facilities,” says Ansari, who says evidence is mounting of a “systematic pattern of ill-treatment and abuse.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
The arrest and detention of Segun Olatunji, the then-editor of the privately owned First News site, by Nigeria’s military in March triggered an outcry from local and international civil society, highlighting an uptick in the unlawful detention of journalists in the West African nation.
Olatunji was taken from his Alagbado home in southwestern Lagos state by more than a dozen armed men who refused to disclose any charges against him or where they were taking him. His wife searched for him at local law enforcement offices without success.
Two weeks later, Olatunji was released without charge under a bridge in the capital Abuja, more than 400 miles from home.
“There are cases where journalists doing their legitimate work are arrested and detained without prosecution in ways that does not certify the dignity of human existence,” lawmaker Clement Jimbo told CPJ. “It is necessary we call the attention of those concerned to this trajectory that is not healthy for our country,” said the politician, who introduced a motion to the House of Representatives this month calling on security agencies to respect the rights of journalists.
CPJ has documented two other cases this year where police officers have seized journalists in connection with their work, without producing a warrant to enter their homes, disclosing the reason for their arrest, or allowing them to contact a lawyer.
On May 1, Foundation for Investigative Journalism reporter Daniel Ojukwu went missing in Lagos and was found in police custody days later in Abuja. On May 22, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Global Upfront Newspapers Madu Onuorah was also arrested by about 10 armed police officers at home in Abuja and driven more than 200 miles away to a police station in southeastern Enugu state.
In both cases, the journalists told CPJ that, they were released without charge, hundreds of miles from home and authorities continue to question the journalists they told CPJ in July.
Federal Capital Territory police spokesperson Josephine Adeh told CPJ on July 23 that she did not recall the two cases and believed they were not handled by her unit. The Abuja Force Headquarters police spokesperson Prince Olumuyiwa Adejobi told CPJ on July 30 that the Nigeria Police Force national cybercrime center continues to investigate allegations against Ojuwkwu and that the center would update the entire force when investigations were over.
CPJ’s calls to army spokesperson Onyema Nwachukwu, as well as calls and text messages to Enugu police spokesperson Daniel Ndukwe Ekea to request comment went unanswered.
In this interview with CPJ, Olatunji shares why he believes he was arrested, how he was treated in custody, and why he subsequently resigned from his job. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How were you arrested?
They entered my living room. One of them said, “We are from the military. We are here to arrest you.” They took me in their van [and] they drove. Close to the Air Force Base, I realized they might be taking me to Abuja. One of them came to me, pulled off my glasses, and then put a blindfold over my face and dragged me to the aircraft. After a while, we landed in Abuja. I was still blindfolded and handcuffed.
How were you treated in detention?
When we got inside the Defence Intelligence Agency’s office, they added leg chains and dragged me to the underground cell. That same day, one of the officers came and tightened the cuffs on my right hand and leg. The iron was cutting into my skin. They did not remove them until Monday [three days later].
Did they question you about your reporting?
At first, they told me that I was abusing their boss because we had published a story that the chief of defense intelligence had been running his office like a family business. But they just brought that as a preamble.
They later went to the crux of the matter. It was a story we published in January about the Chief of Staff to the President of Nigeria Femi Gbajabiamila attempting to divert US$30 billion and houses to Tunde Sabiu Yusuf, a nephew and an aide to the former President Muhammadu Buhari. They were asking me about the sources.
They did not say anybody complained against me. From their utterances, you would know that somebody asked them to do what they were doing. They asked to me write to apologize to Gbajabiamila. They said they would keep me there and I would not be able to do anything.
(When CPJ called Gbajabiamila’s phone line on July 29, the call did not connect. Text messages delivered to that phone line received no replies.)
How did they try to find out your sources?
My phone had been with them. They had forced me to give them the password. They brought my phone and were going through my WhatsApp chats. They mentioned one particular person as my source.
They told me that, “If you don’t know, we have been trailing you for long.” They told me that they followed me to my hometown in Ondo State. They told me, “We knew the bus you took, when you were leaving … and how you took another bus going [back] to Lagos.” And they were right.
How were you freed?
On the second Wednesday, when the story had gone around that they were the ones holding me, they came very late in the night to my cell and asked me, “Who do you know in Abuja that can guarantee [as a surety for] your release?” I quickly remembered Yomi Odunuga of The Nation [newspaper]. So, I told them [and Odunuga came to assist my release].
What happened next?
They told me that they knew everything about me. They knew my house and could come back for me at any time. And the only condition they gave my friend [Odunuga], who signed my bail bond under the bridge that day, was that he should be ready to produce me anytime.
Why did you resign from First News?
They [First News management] apologized to Gbajabiamila and said that the story was false. I stand by the story. So the honorable thing for me to do was to resign.
How is your life now?
Since I came back [from detention], I have been living like a refugee. Come in [to the house], pick some clothes, and run away. I used to have an ulcer. Because of my experience there [in Abuja], that thing [the ulcer] came back.
My family is not happy. They want me to quit [journalism]. This is not the first time this has happened. It is the third time. When I was with The Punch newspaper in Kaduna [state], security officers arrested me twice in 2011 and 2013. They accused me of threatening national security over different stories, but in both cases I was released the same day.
Regarding my safety, the situation has not changed. People have been telling me that that man’s [Gbajabiamila’s] people are threatening to harm me wherever they see me.
Authorities in China have painted over a mural and deleted accounts and memes supporting the woman found chained by the neck in the eastern province of Jiangsu, as internet users used her image to mark International Women’s Day.
A mural painted on the outside of a building in Benxi city, in the northeastern province of Liaoning, featuring an image of the woman from Jiangsu’s Feng county known as Yang Qingxia, alongside the word “freedom.”
An investigation by Jiangsu provincial authorities said Yang was a missing woman known by the nickname Xiaohuamei who was trafficked out of the southwestern province of Yunnan in 1997 and sold twice by human traffickers in Feng county. Nine people have been arrested for crimes linked to her trafficking, including her “husband,” who was identified by his surname, Dong.
Harrowing video footage of Yang, who is believed to have given birth to eight of Dong’s children, chained by the neck in an outbuilding went viral in China last month, prompting widespread public anger over the rampant trafficking of women and girls, aided and abetted by local ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials.
The artists who made the mural, known by their online nicknames @Jorsin- and @revos_one, had their accounts muted, with no content visible onTuesday.
Internet users onTuesdayreposted photos and text about the “Feng county mother of eight,” to call attention to the lack of respect for women’s rights in contemporary China.
“The case of the chained woman hasn’t been resolved openly and transparently, despite all of the comments it received online,” Wang Qingpeng posted on overseas social media. “In an online call for International Women’s Day, please comment and leave a message below this tweet.”
Internet user jason hu@jason27873170 wrote: “Today, we’re not celebrating International Women’s Day, because we don’t even know if the woman in chains is dead or alive, and women and children continue to be abducted.”
“The law has been unable to eradicate this dark cancer in our society, which is very deep-rooted,” the user wrote. “The irony is that … International Women’s Day was initiated under socialism … and yet the end result of several decades of socialism is that women are being chained up.”
Yan Geling, lead producer and writer of Hu Xueyang’s new film, “SOS (Save our Sisters),” calls the woman in chains an extreme embodiment of the demand for women’s rights in China. Credit: RFA
Disappearances reported
The user added that “a large number” of people who spoke out about the Feng county scandal had been called in to “drink tea” with the state security police, or just disappeared.
Beijing-based rights activist Ni Yulan said she still worries about Yang.
“I’m concerned about her too,” she said. “I saw someone with a chain around their neck and a lock, engaging in performance art [posting it online].”
“I have also seen a lot of paintings, all kinds of them, and I have also forwarded them.”
Ni said Yang had lost most of her life to the trafficking gangs and her abusive husband and his family.
“She was unable to live a normal life for 26 years,” she said. “She was abducted when she was still so young, and has gone through so much suffering.”
“We didn’t even have the opportunity to hear her speak,” Ni said.
Hubei rights activist Wu Lijuan said many online activists had switched their usual avatar for one depicting the chained woman.
“We need to learn the truth about what happened, if we are to protect everyone,” Wu told RFA. “Without that … there will be no safety or security for any Chinese woman.”
Independent journalist Gao Yu added: “Even the Winter Olympics and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine haven’t detracted from the attention of the Chinese public and the rest of the world on the case of the chained woman.”
“It’s not going to be fixed by the ministry of public security simply announcing a special campaign against the trafficking of women and children,” she told RFA, calling on China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), to take concrete action.
‘SOS (Save our Sisters)’
Meanwhile, Chinese film director Hu Xueyang screened a new film onMondayto mark International Women’s Day in Paris, supported by Chinese-American writer Yang Geling, her husband Lawrence Walker and Germany-based artist and writer Yoyo.
The film tells the story of a woman who escaped from North Korea and lived in hiding in northeastern China. But instead of being rescued by South Koreans as they had hoped, they wound up in the hands of a trafficking gang.
Forced to become a sex worker in a hair salon, the heroine meets a man who falls in love with her and wants to rescue her. Despite warnings, he goes under cover to discover a number of shady stories at the crossover between the trafficking and organ-smuggling gangs and the corrupt local police officers who collude with them.
The film ends as a North Korean agent posing as a South Korean missionary escorts the heroine back to North Korea, as she sings a North Korean folk song, “The Ballad of Kikyo,” moving the agent to the extent that he takes off her handcuffs.
Poet Yang Lian read out a poem written for the Jiangsu chained woman at the film’s premiere.
“Please delete the word mother in Chinese,” the poem reads. “Because mother has been chained, dragged … raped, injured, soiled, ruined, hollowed out, trampled, left cold and hungry, bullied, mutilated, consumed, destroyed and discarded.”
Hu arranged the screening as a form of protest at the treatment of Yang Qingxia, according to the event invitation.
Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Fong Tak Ho, Qiao Long, Xiaoshan Huang and Chingman.
Chinese commentators have taken aim at an official investigation into a woman found chained up in the eastern province of Jiangsu, calling for a wider inquiry into rampant human trafficking and official collusion with criminal gangs who buy and sell women for “marriage.”
An investigation by Jiangsu provincial authorities said the woman, named as Yang Qingxia on her marriage certificate, was a missing woman known by the nickname Xiaohuamei who was trafficked out of the southwestern province of Yunnan in 1997 and sold twice by human traffickers in Feng county.
Investigators said nine people have been arrested and would face criminal investigation, including Yang’s “husband,” surnamed Dong and others involved in her trafficking.
Meanwhile, Feng county ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary Lou Hai and governor Zheng Chunwei have been fired for failing to “uphold people’s rights and interests.”
“On Feb. 22, the Feng county people’s procuratorate approved the arrest of the criminal suspect Dong ***min on suspicion of abuse,” state news agency Xinhua reported.
“Xiaohuamei was bought by Dong ***geng (Dong ***min’s father) inJune 1998… the relevant criminal facts are still under investigation,” it said, adding that Yang has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and is being treated in hospital.
It said DNA testing had revealed that Yang wasn’t missing woman Li Ying from Sichuan province, as many citizen investigators have claimed, citing the striking similarity of facial features when comparing a known photo of Li with a recent photo of Yang.
Fifteen other Feng county officials have also been punished in connection with the case.
”Conflicting statements’
Official media said the county government had issued “conflicting statements” that had fueled widespread public anger about the case.
Veteran Beijing journalist Gao Yu said the latest announcement on the Feng county case bore the hallmarks of central government messaging.
“This fifth announcement is actually coming from the central government, and I don’t think there’ll be another,” Gao told RFA. “The final decision has been made.”
But she said there are many unanswered questions.
“This fifth announcement is also unconvincing, and its credibility is still zero,” she said. “A centralized regime can ignore tens of billions of concerns, and it has maintained its own stability for decades by doing so.”
Beijing-based artist and activist Ji Feng said the statement also glosses over the much deeper problem of rampant trafficking in women and girls, aided and abetted by Chinese officials.
“They are making sure the buck stops in Feng county,” Ji said. “They are totally avoiding the issue of rape and human trafficking, the essential things, and the punishments are only for negligence.”
“The aim is to exonerate the CCP and its officials at ever level … they are all accomplices in this crime,” he said.
Waking people up
He said public anger over the incident is unlikely to be soon forgotten.
“This whole story has already annoyed the vast majority of people and woken up a lot of people,” Ji said. “Very few people will now believe that the official story is the correct one.”
“The chained woman could have been our mother, our sister, our daughter, and the rapists aren’t only Dong but also the officials and others [who enabled it],” Ji said.
“They should abolish the word abduction or trafficking, because what it really means is kidnapping, detention and violent rape,” he said.
Current affairs commentator Guan Shan said many had noticed that Yang’s age had been changed to 44, to fit the Xiaohuamei narrative, after online investigations pointed out a discrepancy between the age of the missing Yunnan woman and Yang, as given on her “marriage certificate.”
The new narrative also makes a nonsense of the name of one of Dong’s children, who was earlier said to be named Dong Xianggang because they were born in 1997, the year of the handover of Hong Kong.
Under the new official version of events, Dong Xianggang’s year of birth is reported as 1999.
Deeply entrenched abusive practices
A resident of nearby Xuzhou who gave only the surname Li said the sale of women and girls was deeply entrenched in the region.
“It’s awful, the way they abduct women and children, and use them as tools to serve these chains of vested interests [including officials],” Li said. “The roots of this go very deep; they are all members of the same criminal gang.”
Beijing lawyer Mo Shaoping agreed.
“The case of the chained woman in Feng County is just the tip of the iceberg,” Mo said. “There have been many other reports of abduction and trafficking of women in other provinces and cities in mainland China.”
“This is an extremely cruel crime … We should change the law and crack down harder. Police should also hold accountable all of the public officials who participated in it.”
Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Yitong Wu, Chingman, Qiao Long and Jojo Man.
Authorities in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu have deployed county-level militia to seal off the home village of a trafficked woman found chained by the neck in an outbuilding and called in dozens of people for questioning over the leakage of documents linked to her story, sources told RFA.
More than 100 people in Jiangsu and Anhui have been called in for questioning by police in connection with the public leaking of information linked to the case of a chained woman in while county-level armed militia forces have been deployed in large numbers to Feng county.
Jiangsu current affairs commentator Jiang Ziyang said the move is part of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s insistence on “stability maintenance” ahead of the annual parliamentary sessions in Beijing in early March.
“The government probably won’t deal with a lot of this now, because they will be sending in the militia in large numbers for the sake of stability maintenance,” Jiang said. “The county-level militia will take over from here, so it’s effectively a form of military control.”
“I don’t think the investigation by the provincial level authorities that people were hoping for is going to happen now,” he said.
Authorities in have Feng county detained three people including the husband of Yang Qingxia, who is surnamed Dong, amid an official investigation, but online comments increasingly pointed out contradictions in their statements about the woman’s identity and raised further questions about the involvement of local officials.
The Jiangsu provincial government announced last week it was taking over the investigation, which has sparked massive public anger and online debate about rampant trafficking in women and girls for forced marriage, particularly in the region around Feng county.
Jiang said government censors are currently making sure that very little information about the Feng county case or about the trafficking of women and girls makes it onto social media.
“It’s very difficult to send anything now,” Jiang said. “A while back, we were writing so many posts, but now, we can’t post anything, which is very scary.”
Meanwhile, a social media user nicknamed @I can carry 120 pounds said she was still traumatized after being detained by police in Pei county, which neighbors Feng county, after traveling there to try to help Yang.
“Extreme fear meant that my whole-body defenses were unconsciously switched on … it was like a sword piercing through me,” she wrote after returning home.
She described the experience as prompting “the collapse of my entire world view, of everything I had always trusted, into lies.”
Roads blocked
Online posts said roads in and out of Feng county are being blocked by police and militia.
Repeated calls to the Feng county police department ended in a busy tone or rang unanswered during office hours onMonday.
An official who answered the phone at the Xuzhou city police department referred RFA to a social media account linked to the Xuzhou police department, where updates would be posted when released.
“I don’t know when. Just follow that account, OK?” the official said.
A media worker who declined to be named said all news about the Feng county case is now subject to strict controls by the CCP’s propaganda department, with publications ordered to use only centrally approved text, and to regard anything else as “rumor.”
Activists all over the country have been receiving calls from censors ordering them to delete posts, photos and video relating to the story, the media worker said.
A Jiangsu resident surnamed Ling said the case is indicative of rampant human rights abuses in China.
“The case of the chained woman is by no means an isolated one,” Ling said. “We often hear about human trafficking, missing children and begging on the streets.”
“The official announcements … have been full of holes, and the public have completely lost confidence in the government,” he said.
Systemic issues
U.S.-based activist Yang Zili said the issues exposed by the Feng county case are systemic.
“The systemic problem in China is not only the lack of democracy and freedom of the press, but also legal issues,” he said. “There is such a crime as abduction and trafficking in women, but it’s a bit of a cover-up for far more serious offenses that include illegal detention, rape, abuse, assault and humiliation.”
“Clearly the local government has been implicated from the very start … they are a part of this organized crime racket,” he said. “Obvious crimes like human trafficking can’t exist for long without the protective umbrella of the government.”
Former 1989 pro-democracy protest leader Lü Jinghua said the central government may still be divided about how to handle the incident, as it came amid the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
“I don’t think the central government has reached a consensus on the issue … while the Jiangsu provincial government or the municipal authorities in Xuzhou must be under much more pressure, and is taking a number of actions relating to propaganda, such as talking about thorough investigations,” Lü said.
Lü said authorities seem to have turned a blind eye to trafficking, and when they did bother to notice, it was too little, too late.
A bookstore in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou draped a chain over a display of feminist books onMonday, in protest at the status of women, after a mentally ill woman was found chained by the neck in an outhouse in Feng county, Jiangsu.
A viral video of a woman identified on her marriage certificate as Yang Qingxia has sparked mass public anger on Chinese social media, prompting a crackdown on well-wishers and rights activists who have spoken out against rampant trafficking of girls and women in rural China, and those who traveled to her village in Feng county in a bid to help her.
The display was titled “Books you should read about Feng county,” according to photos posted to social media and confirmed by Reuters, and including “Men Explain Things to Me” by Rebecca Solnit and “Masculine Domination” by Pierre Bourdieu.
However, the display was later removed due to its “controversial” nature, Reuters reported.
Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Qiao Long, Simon Lee, Jia Ao and Fong Tak Ho.
