The woman who became known as “ink girl” for defacing a poster of Chinese leader Xi Jinping in public remains missing after nearly four years.
In July 2018, Dong Yaoqiong, 29, recorded herself splashing black ink on the poster in front of a Shanghai high-rise while livestreaming on Twitter (now X). “I oppose Xi Jinping’s dictatorship and tyranny. I oppose the Communist Party’s brainwashing and suppression of me,” she said.
The Hunan province native was soon arrested, and was committed to a psychiatric ward, in 2018 and again in 2020.
Advocacy group Weiquanwan (Rights Protection Network) on Sunday released report in Chinese saying there had been no news since her third and final institutionalization in February 2022—188 weeks ago—and it’s unknown whether she is still alive.
Such disappearances are common in China. This is especially true of dissidents, who are often detained without due process and face secretive trials and indefinite detention when they challenge the Chinese Communist Party.
Newsweek reached out to the Chinese Foreign Ministry via written request for comment.
Adek Berry/AFP via Getty Images
Dong Yaoqiong was first released in November 2019 and she briefly stayed with her mother in the Hunan town of Taoshui. Washington, D.C.-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders cited her father, a miner named Dong Jianbiao who contested that she was suffering from mental illness, as saying she “lacked vitality” and had gained weight.
The NGO also shared images he provided, purporting to show a prescription for his daughter for Olanzapine, a drug used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Dong Jianbiao was eventually arrested. In 2022, he died in prison as he was serving a years-long sentence for opposing his daughter’s internment.
While prison authorities said he had died from diabetes, human rights activist Chen Siming, who fled China in 2023, cited relatives as saying his body had been covered with injuries and that the authorities had ordered his body to be cremated five days later.
Rights Protection Network repeated the allegation that Dong Yaoqiong’s mother had signed off on her daughters internment and received a new home from local authorities for her cooperation. Newsweek was not able to independently confirm this.
“The Chinese government has a long history of misusing psychiatric hospitals to jail dissidents and activists, Human Rights Watch Associate China Director Maya Wang told Newsweek.
“Compounding this problem is the fact that anyone in China can be held in these facilities for an indefinite period of time based on the existence or simply an allegation of a psychosocial disability by the authorities, family members, and employers,” she went on, adding that the intended have “very little to no right to contest their involuntary commitment.”
