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Police in the southwestern province of Yunnan have refused to set up a case file after the son of dissident poet Wang Zang was sent to hospital following an attack by older students at his high school, according to the boy’s parents.
Wang Nianci, 15, was hospitalized following an attack by four older boys at the Zixi High School in Yunnan’s Chuxiong region at around 9:30 p.m. local time on Sept. 12, Wang Zang’s wife Wang Li told RFA Mandarin service in an interview on Wednesday.
The boys surrounded Wang Nianci in the bathroom, beating him and leaving with a fractured skull and broken nose, according to a CT scan carried out at the hospital, she said.
The attack came after authorities slapped a gag order, travel ban and round-the-clock surveillance on Wang Li and the couple's children as part of a nationwide " stability maintenance" operation during the National People's Congress in Beijing last year.
Wang Zang and Wang Li were both jailed behind closed doors in May 2020 by the Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture Intermediate People’s Court, which found them guilty of “incitement to subvert state power” after they gave interviews to foreign media organizations.
Wang Zang said he was unable to comment on Wednesday, as he was banned from speaking to the media following his release from prison in May at the end of his four-year jail term. Wang Li was released in 2022 after serving a two-and-a-half year jail term.
“The police made it clear to me the day before yesterday that I’m not allowed to give interviews,” he said. “I have asked my wife to talk to you about this.”
Wang said the couple had gotten a call at around 10 p.m. on Sept. 12 and rushed to the school, where they were asked by school officials to wait in the security guard room.
“They wouldn’t let us in to see my son’s injuries [at first],” she said. “When he came out, his nose and face were swollen and his hands were covered in blood.”
‘We’re still waiting’
The couple took Wang Nianci to the local police station to report the incident, where police took their statement, before calling in the four alleged attackers, but issued no official documents regarding the case, Wang Li said.
According to the medical report from the Chuxiong People’s Hospital, a copy of which was shared with RFA Mandarin, Wang Nianci had sustained a fracture to the parietal bone, which forms part of the skull, and suffered from headaches as a result of that trauma.
But police didn’t seem to take the attack very seriously, and suggested instead that her son leave the school he is currently enrolled in, Wang Li said.
“We asked them to open a case file, but they kept saying we had to wait,” she said. “We’re still waiting.”
“We were supposed to meet with the police from the local police station today, but we haven’t received a call from them yet, so it's still unclear what's happening,” she added.
Last year, the couple called for a police investigation into the drowning death of Wang Zang’s two-year-old nephew, which Wang Li said had occurred in “suspicious circumstances,” but no further information about the tragedy has been forthcoming.
In May 2020, police in Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture arrested both Wang Zang and Wang Li for "incitement to subvert state power," with the charges citing his poetry, essays, interviews with foreign media, and performance art since his earlier release from prison in 2015.
Wang's earlier sentence came after he posted a performance art selfie in support of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, and he was subjected to torture and mistreatment while in Beijing's No. 1 Detention Center, his lawyer said at the time.
In the photo, Wang holds up an umbrella, a symbol of the 2014 Occupy Central movement, and makes a middle-finger gesture.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie.