CHINA:A blind Chinese human rights activist who provided legal services for farmers and wrote a report about forced sterilisations, has been severely beaten in jail by other prisoners on the orders of prison guards, according to the human rights group Amnesty International.
Chen Guangcheng was sentenced to four years and three months in jail last year on charges critics say were trumped up by officials angry at his exposure of forced late-term abortions.
Mr Chen went blind as a child and is a self-taught lawyer, who was not allowed to graduate because of his disability. He listened in to classes and, like many so-called "barefoot lawyers", he used what legal skills he had to represent his fellow villagers.
When he refused to have his head shaved, "six other prisoners had pushed him to the floor, encouraged by prison guards, and hit and kicked him hard", he told his wife, according to Amnesty.
"He has begun a hunger strike in protest, refusing water as well as food. Amnesty International believes his life is in danger, and that he is at risk of further torture and ill-treatment," Amnesty said. "He said he was being punished for 'being disobedient' due to his insistence on filing an appeal to the provincial higher court."
Amnesty said Mr Chen had also been denied medical access.
He was jailed on traffic offences but rights activists believe he was imprisoned because of a report he wrote which said tens of thousands of people with an illegal number of children, who were ineligible to have more, were coerced into late-term abortions and people were forced to have sterilisations.
Chinese activists have said the heavy sentence shows officials are clamping down on "rights defenders", a network of lawyers and activists seeking to expand freedoms through litigation and internet-driven campaigns.
Mr Chen's profile in China is very high and both domestic and foreign civil rights campaigners have called on Beijing to free him and investigate claims that he was tortured in custody. Time magazine put him on its list of "2006's Top 100 people who shape our world".
The report from Linyi in the Shandong Province told of men arrested while their wives were forced into abortions eight months into their pregnancies. The forced abortions and sterilisations were reportedly carried out by officials who needed to keep within quotas so as not to incur black marks on their records.