House arrest victim to get state compensation

Chen Qingxia, a petitioner who was under house arrest for three years, is entitled to state compensation after investigators on Friday ruled that security staff had made "mistakes" in the law enforcement of her.

Zheng Chun, deputy chief of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee in Yichun City, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, said that Chen will be compensated in line with the State Compensation Law. He said those who offended Chen and her family members will be seriously dealt with and subject to the criminal law.

Four officials including three police officers in Yichun and a head of the complaint letter handling office in Dailing District, Yichun, were sacked for mishandling Chen's case, according to the investigators.

The 44-year-old woman now confined to a wheelchair had been held in an abandoned morgue for three years since 2009 after receiving an 18-month re-education labor sentence for complaining about her husband's detention

She caught the public attention after the media reported that people found posters Chen put on the window of her dungeon, bearing cries for mercy, in December 2012.

Investigators found that the local authorities in Dailing District sought to punish her for petitioning in Beijing, where she traveled to seek justice for her husband's mistreatment at a re-education labor camp.

The husband Song Lisheng had been given the one-year-and-seven-month service for attempting to escape quarantine during a SARS epidemic in 2003.

A court in Yichun revoked the re-education sentence to Song in November 2003 after Chen petitioned the city government. However, the police department continued to enforce the re-education to Song, who suffered bruising and mental health deterioration, after he was freed.

Chen decided to petition higher-ranking authorities for her husband's case. She took her son with her and went to Beijing in 2007, where she was intercepted by security staff.

The boy aged 12 at that time was left unattended and was lost after security staff put the mother into a cab and sent her back to Yichun.

The woman's health deteriorated while being restricted in the abandoned bungalow once used as a morgue in a local welfare house.