Surviving Tiananmen?

Newsreport on Yu Dongyue, one of the three men who threw eggshells filled with red paint at the portrait of Mao Zedong during the Tiananmen protests in 1989. He was disowned by the protestors themselves and handed over to the authorities.

The last of the paint-throwers was finally freed from prison yesterday a shattered and mentally ill 38-year-old man. The prisoner, Yu Dongyue, was driven insane by 16 years of beatings, torture and solitary confinement. He is reported to be incoherent and unable to communicate...

By last year, Mr. Yu was reported to be babbling incoherently and consuming his own feces and urine. “He has become deranged,” Yu Zhijian told the South China Morning Post last year. “He can't have normal conversations with people. He can't take care of himself. He talks to himself all day long. . . . His nerve is totally broken and his health is terrible. Few prisoners in China are as bad as he is.”

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