DHARAMSHALA, JULY 18: A prominent Chinese dissident and an outspoken critic of China’s policy on Tibet was beaten up reportedly by plain clothed government – trained men outside a subway station in Beijing on Wednesday night.
Noted Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia posted pictures of himself with a bloodied nose on his Twitter account and wrote that he was attacked by three men who were waiting for Hu in the parking lot.
According to his Twitter post, he suffered a maxillary frontal bone fracture. He added in the post that he’d been beaten up in the same spot where he’d parked his car, and that a red cross had been marked on a fence in this location but nowhere else. Hu believes that the attack had been planned, and reported it to police.
“Just now, at 8:12 p.m. today, July 16, I was set upon and injured by some plainclothes personnel about 100 meters (330 feet) from the eastern exit of the Caofang subway system, on the north side of the road,” Hu wrote on his Twitter account.
Hu wrote that the assailants drove away after beating him up severely. He wrote that he could not see the car’s license plate as his glasses had dropped during the beating.
Hu told Radio Free Asia that he was returning from a meeting with a Spanish documentary filmmaker who was making a film about rights activist Cao Shunli, who died shortly after her release earlier this year after being denied adequate medical care.
The assailants, Hu said, were waiting for him as he returned to his car.
Hu Jia was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in 2008, the year Beijing hosted the Olympics. Hu was awarded the Sakharov Prize for his campaign for human rights and AIDS.
Chinese government reacted strongly against merely naming Hu as one of the favorite contenders for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
Starting with advocacy for rural AIDS sufferers, Hu emerged as one of the nation’s most vocal advocates of democratic rights, religious freedom and self-determination for Tibet.
