31-year old Dong Yaoqiong, the girl who posted a video of her throwing ink on a poster and defacing the image of Xi Jinping in Shanghai in December 2018 in protest against his “authoritarian dictatorship”, once again on December 1, 2020, posted a two-minute video, which has been widely circulated on social media platforms including Twitter. The national security police quickly arrived and deleted all her tweets.  In the video, she says she was released from the psychiatric facility in the summer and assigned to a clerical job at a county government office. She said, “I have now decided to speak up on Twitter because I no longer fear them, even if they lock me up again in hospital … even if that means being locked up forever.” Saying she no longer has the freedom to choose her job or friends, she said “They don’t threaten or terrorise [me] but they are essentially stripping me of all human contact, including with my father. I don’t want to live like this any more. It’s either do or die – I can no longer carry on under such stressful surveillance and I’m on the verge of collapse.” Dong Yaoqiong was sent to the psychiatric facility in Zhuzhou, Hunan after she defaced the poster in July 2018, and was kept there until the end of 2019. She was admitted for a second time in May this year for about a month.

(Comment: Dong Yaoqiong was allowed to meet her ill father after her protest, but the restrictions on her remain.)