Wang, a manual worker in Shanghai at the time of the May 1989 pro-democracy movement, was a leading member of the Shanghai Workers Autonomous Federation which was formed that month. Detained shortly after the June 4, 1989 government crackdown, Wang then spent two and a half years in police detention undergoing “re-education through labour” on account of his involvement in the banned workers’ group. In April 1993, after he committed an act of self-mutilation in front of a Shanghai police station in public protest against having recently been severely beaten up by the police, he was subsequently detained and then forcibly committed to the Shanghai Ankang Mental Hospital, a facility run by the Public Security Bureau to detain and treat mentally ill people. Wang has been held incommunicado at the Shanghai Ankang now for more than 12 years.
June 2005
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