Detained 37 days, feminist promises to keep up fight
BEIJING — Buoyed by the support she has received both inside the country and from abroad, one of China’s leading feminists has vowed to continue advocating for women’s rights after her release from detention last week, despite continued police harassment.
Li Tingting, 25, a lesbian campaigner on women’s issues, is probably the most prominent of the five women who were detained in early March for planning to distribute stickers at bus stations to raise awareness of sexual harassment on public transportation. Detained for 37 days, the five were released on April 13 after a global outcry but remain under investigation. They have been told to report regularly to police, to not leave their home cities and to not talk to journalists.
But Li, in a written statement, said she was determined not only to force the government to drop the case against her, but also to continue her struggle for justice for women in China.
She also spoke out about her ordeal in detention, how the pressure has caused strains within her family, and about how she even began to doubt herself after 10 days of harrowing interrogation.
“The public is more clear now about who the feminists are, and what they are doing,” she wrote. “What happened to us told the world the truth, the real side of China. Many people outside the country thought gender equality was not an issue in China. They were misled by government propaganda, including Mao’s speech that women hold up half the sky, but now they’ve got to know what China is really like.”
In many ways, gender inequality has widened in China since Mao Zedong died, and the country turned away from communism toward state- directed capitalism. Women are unequal in marriage and before the law, and underrepresented in the boardroom and in politics, experts say.
Before her release, police forced Li to sign a pledge not to talk to the media, something her lawyer, Wang Yu, said has no basis in Chinese law; Li appears determined not to be silenced entirely.
Interrogated 49 times during her detention for up to eight hours at a time, Li said one police officer “spat” smoke into her face many times during the questioning, while several insulted her for being a lesbian. On one night, she was only allowed two hours sleep.