Rape victim's petitioning mother Tang Hui wins court review
Tang Hui, who was sent to a labour camp after petitioning the authorities, says she is not optimistic about her campaign for justice
Hunan's high court agreed to hear an appeal by Tang Hui, the mother of a teenage girl who was raped and forced into prostitution by local officials.
A lower court had dismissed her compensation claim last month against local authorities who sent her to a labour camp for protesting inappropriately.
I am not appealing just for the compensation [but] to prove my innocence
Tang was sentenced to 18 months of re-education through labour at a camp in Yongzhou last year but was released after just over a week when her case sparked a public outcry. She said she was not optimistic about the appeal, even though the high court had said on Sunday that it would review her case over compensation for her incarceration.
"The bureaucrats shield one another in their wrongdoings, and I'm nobody compared to them," Tang said. "I was so optimistic when the intermediate court accepted my appeal last month, but in the end the verdict devastated me because it wasn't ruled based on law."
On April 19, the intermediate court in Yongzhou rejected Tang's demands that the local labour camp commission should pay her about 1,500 yuan (HK$1,800) for the loss of her freedom for nine days in the camp in August, 1,000 yuan for psychological damage and give her a written apology. The commission had rejected her claim for compensation in November.
Tang said she felt like committing suicide after she lost the first appeal because, she said, the mainland legal system was too "filthy". But she lodged another appeal with the higher court on April 30 after lawyers suggested she trust the law one more time.
Xu Liping , one of Tang's lawyers, said the court was likely to set a hearing date in another two weeks but admitted it would be a hard case to win.