“We are not satisfied by the results of the investigation,” he said,
having reached Beijing and hired a lawyer, Zhang Kai, to sue the local
government.
“The government did not talk to me much after what happened. They just
said: ‘What is done is done. This situation has already happened.’ After I
escaped, I heard the news that they had hung banners calling me a traitor.
They apparently did that to threaten me,” he said.
While the two officials have been fired, Mr Deng’s family has not been offered
any specific compensation for their loss, merely some “living expenses”.
Last Sunday, Mr Deng was called from the hospital to have dinner with
officials from his village, Zengjiazhen.
“Even before the dinner started, the village leader got a phone call from
the county leader, so he left before we ate. I realised my opportunity had
come to escape.” With only one person tailing him, a woman on a
motorbike, Mr Deng was able to run along a river bank and shake her. “She
had to get off her bike at a pedestrian-only bridge, and I easily lost her,”
he said.
“I stayed at a friend’s place in Zhenping county [his home county] for
two days, having taken out my sim card and battery from my mobile. I did not
sleep or get any new clothes, I could not risk being arrested. Then, on the
night of the 26th, I rented a car and drove to Ankang.
“Every time we saw police, we stopped and I would get out and walk along
the river until we had passed them. I assumed there would be government
people at the train station, so I rented another car and drove ten hours to
Shiyan in Hubei. Then I took a train from there to Beijing,” Mr Deng
said he was in touch with his family every day by telephone and that they
are now planning on leaving Shaanxi when the case dies down, in case their
local officials try to revenge themselves.
The couple already have a young daughter. But because they lived in the
countryside, they were entitled to a second child, but had to go through the
bureaucracy of transferring Mrs Feng’s residency from the city to the
countryside.
Mrs Feng remains in the Shaanxi Zhenping County hospital, and Mr Deng’s
sister, who was at her bedside yesterday, said that government officials
have now left them in peace.
“We are worried, however, that Feng’s situation is worsening again. She
has low blood pressure, frequent headaches and stomach aches,” she
said. “She has been rather gloomy these days too.”
Mrs Deng said several villagers had helped the local government kidnap Mrs
Feng and abort her child. She added that the investigation into the incident
had been “like a class at school where the head master scolds pupils
without actually punishing them properly.”
Additional reporting by Valentina Luo
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