Authorities in the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia have handed a three-year suspended jail term to the wife of a prominent ethnic Mongolian dissident and sent her to live with the couple's son, who is being held under house arrest, relatives and a U.S.-based rights group said.
Xinna, wife of dissident Hada, was handed the sentence during a secret trial in mid-to-early April, according to a friend of the family, surnamed Zhang.
"She got three years with a five-year reprieve," Zhang said. "The trial was held in the middle of last month and she was found guilty."
"She has been released and sent home ... but her movements are still restricted," he added.
Zhang said Xinna could not be contacted by telephone, as she had no cell phone and her landline had long since been cut off by the authorities.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-based Southern Mongolia Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC) said in an e-mailed statement that the authorities had tried to bribe the family to give up their political activism on behalf of ethnic Mongolians living under Chinese rule.
"None of the three has accepted [this]," it quoted Xinna's mother, Hanshuulan, as saying.
"They are determined to sue the government for the arbitrary detention, imprisonment, and physical and mental sufferings inflicted on them during the past 17 years," she said, adding: "Personally I also do not believe that they have done anything wrong."
The couple's grown son, Uiles, had been locked up for 10 months on drug charges and was released on bail in September, she added.
'Luxury resort'
Rights activists say Hada has been held in a secret prison by the Chinese authorities since completing a 15-year jail term on Dec. 10, 2010.
He was recently transferred to a "luxury resort" in Uuhan Banner (in Chinese, Aohan Qi), SMHRIC said.
The statement quoted Hada's uncle, Haschuluu, as saying that he had lunch with the activist, who was escorted by about a dozen Chinese state security police.
"I was permitted to have lunch with Hada in Ulaanhad on April 20 when he was being transferred to a luxury resort in Uuhan Banner," Haschuluu told SMHRIC.
"More than 10 state security personnel escorted him, and two identified themselves as a doctor and nurse," he said.
Concerns have been growing over Hada's health following 17 years in Chinese jails, SMHRIC said.
"Hada has been suffering from multiple illnesses including leg pain, back problems, stomach aches, and deteriorating vision ... Recently he has been experiencing frequent urination due to a kidney problem, making him wake up multiple times at night," it quoted Haschuluu as saying.
Deprivation of rights
In 1996, Hada was sentenced to 15 years in jail for "splittism" and "espionage" and an additional four years' "deprivation of political rights," which, under China’s Criminal Law, includes restrictions on voting, as well as freedom of speech and association.
Chinese officials have said he was released in December 2010, but is still serving out his four years of deprivation of political rights.
Beijing-based rights lawyer Ding Xikui said Hada should be allowed to go free under Chinese law, despite having been stripped of his political rights, as long as he had remained within the terms of his release from prison.
"The main question is whether or not he committed a crime during the period of deprivation of political rights," Ding said. "We have no way of knowing this."
In the run-up to Hada’s release in 2010, authorities shut down the family’s Mongolian Studies Bookstore, detaining both Uiles and Xinna.
Xinna was accused of "illegally running a business" for selling Mongolian-language books and music albums, while Uiles was accused of drug-dealing.
A few months ago he was placed under house arrest at the family's rented warehouse in the regional capital, Hohhot, where he has now been joined by his mother, SMHRIC said.
Reported by Fung Yat-yiu for RFA's Cantonese service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.