Student demands mom be freed from detention center

A Beijing-based university student from Lanzhou, Northwestern China's Gansu Province, filed a complaint demanding his mother's release from a re-education through labor center Tuesday.

Guo Dajun, a graduate student from the Beijing Institute of Technology, said his 54-year-old mother, Zhao Meifu, was taken away by officers from Gansu's Beijing office at Beijing railway station as she was about to return home on November 12.

Zhao was promptly escorted back to Lanzhou and thrown into detention.

"My mother was in Beijing for a week visiting me," Guo told the Global Times.

The local re-education committee ordered Zhao be held for one year at a re-education through labor center after the committee claimed she petitioned at inappropriate places in Beijing and severely disturbed the social order.

However, Zhao's husband told the Global Times that his wife only visited the office of letters and calls in Beijing, where official complaints are taken, and did not make any public protest.

Zhao, who started to petition in 1999 over land dispute with her village officials, was detained in the re-education center in 2010 for six months.

The printed notice of detention sent to the family was identical to the order given two years ago, with the current date corrected in handwriting at the bottom.

Local officials said the detention order is valid for life, meaning that "if my mother ever petitions again, she will be sent back to the camp using the same order," Guo told the Global Times Tuesday, adding that officials did not provide any solid evidence to prove his mother made an inappropriate public petition.

"We strictly followed procedures to send her back to the detention center," the head of the office of letters and calls in Lanzhou surnamed Yuan told the Global Times Tuesday, refusing to comment further.