'Petition mother' Tang Hui's determined fight for justice over daughter's rape

Tang Hui appears calm yet preoccupied a week after losing a court fight for compensation from local officials who sent her to a labour camp. Without a trace of bitterness, she goes about her daily routine: cooking rice for breakfast, running her flower shop and preparing paperwork for an appeal.

"I will appeal. I did nothing wrong to deserve being sent to a labour camp," she told the South China Morning Post. "I wish the 're-education through labour' system would be abolished, or other innocent people will become victims, like me."

The diminutive 40-year-old is fighting a lonely and difficult campaign to demand compensation from government officials who put her in a labour camp for nine days in August.

Tang is famous. She became known as the "petition mother" for her desperate and tireless visits to government authorities to demand justice for her daughter. Seven years ago, seven men abducted, raped and sold her only daughter, then 11 years old, to a local underground brothel. She was kept there for three months.

Lingling, where Tang lives, is the largest district of Yongzhou city, more than 300 kilometres south of Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. With a population of 610,000, Lingling struggles with poverty and is underdeveloped economically. Shabby shops line narrow streets in its old town. At night, red and yellow neon lights advertise sex shops. Fliers featuring call girls are scattered around hotels.

Tang's life used to be peaceful. Her family ran a small restaurant near a nursing school. Then her daughter went missing at the beginning of October 2006.