Paralysed China activist seeks justice in parliament
06 Mar 2007 04:15:05 GMT Source: Reuters
BEIJING, March 6 (Reuters) - A Chinese activist working to help villagers displaced by the giant Three Gorges Dam and left paralysed after a beating last June, has appealed to China's parliament for redress, according to a rights group. Fu Xiancai, who has been petitioning since the 1990s for better compensation for the more than one million people flooded out of their homes by the dam, was beaten after meeting with police in Zigui county in central Hubei province last June. The beating, which left Fu paralysed from the shoulders down, occurred after the activist was critical about resettlement terms in an interview given to a German broadcaster. A police investigation into Fu's beating said the activist had inflicted the injuries on himself and local courts had thrown out the case, New York-based Human Rights in China reported. "Fu ... still has no feeling from the waist down, and has only limited movement in his hands," the rights group said in a statement seen by Reuters on Tuesday. Fu had appealed directly to National People's Congress Standing Committee Chairman, Wu Bangguo, to intervene, the statement said. "Although it has been eight months since I was attacked, I have not completely lost my faith in China's judicial process, and pass every pain-filled day in hope that justice will soon arrive," Human Rights in China quoted Fu as saying. Last week, a 79-year-old Chinese activist who was placed under house arrest for helping to bring to light official complicity in the spread of AIDS in her home province was freed to collect a human rights award in Washington after U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton asked President Hu Jintao to intervene.
