Lu Decheng

Lu Decheng (* in Liuyang , Hunan Province , People's Republic of China ) is a Chinese dissident .

He is best known for his role in "Egg Washing" of Mao's Tiananmen portrait with two friends, Yu Dongyue and Yu Zhijian, during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. The three men were students and workers detained in the square and handed over to the police, then charged with counterrevolutionary sabotage crimes against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Lu Decheng was sentenced to 16 years, Yu Dongyue to 20 years, and Yu Zhijian to life imprisonment. Lu Decheng was released after 9 years, then left China and traveled to Canada in 2006 . Lu now lives in Calgary , Alberta with his wife and children.

Life before Tian'anmen

Lu worked for the bus company in Liuyang. His family has deep roots in the Communist Party, and his grandmother was a martyr widow . His mother died when he was a little boy. His father remarried shortly after her death. At the age of 19, Lu and his first wife Qiuping ran away together because their parents did not approve of their relationship. In 1982, Qiuping found out that she was pregnant. As an unmarried 18-year-old, Qiuping's pregnancy was considered illegal. Qiuping was too young to be pregnant; they were unmarried and did not have a birth permit. The couple chose to fake an abortion, then married and prepared to secretly have their child. Her child was healthy at birth, but after a week it fell ill and was taken to the hospital, where it died. After their child died, the couple returned to Liuyang. In 1984, Qiuping became pregnant again and had a healthy girl.

Mao's egg washing

In May 1989, Lu and his two friends "lost all faith in the Chinese Communist Party ." After participating in a parade in Changsha City, Hunan Province, they took a bus to Beijing to express their protests alongside the students. On May 22nd, they decided to deface Mao's portrait in Tiananmen Square. Lu said in an interview with Xiu Lu, of The Epoch Times , “On May 22nd, while the three of us were sitting on the steps of the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square, we decided to put ink and eggs on the official portrait of Throwing Mao. Our intention was to demonstrate our total rejection of the authority of the Chinese Communist Party at its root - Mao. ”On May 23, the three friends walked into Tiananmen Square and tossed the ink-filled eggs at the large portrait of Mao. Shortly after they threw the eggs, students and workers quickly caught the three men and handed them over to the police. They were immediately arrested and taken to a Beijing prison for counter-revolutionary sabotage.

Sentencing and imprisonment

The three men were tried after June 4 and found guilty of counter-revolutionary sabotage . Lu Decheng was sentenced to 16 years, Yu Dongyue to 20 years, and Yu Zhijian to life imprisonment. The three men were held in the same prison, the No. 2 Prison in Hunan Province. In 1990 the three men were separated. The authorities did not agree that they should be held in the same prison and keep in touch. In addition to the hard physical labor that was expected of them as a prisoner, Lu was also subjected to mental torture because of his status as a political prisoner. Yu Dongyue was also tortured so badly that he was driven insane. In July 1995, Qiuping was sent to prison and asked Lu for a divorce. Lu Decheng was released from prison in 1998 after 9 years.

Life after prison

After his release in 1998, Lu remarried and started a new family. He tried to find a job, but the Chinese authorities kept hunting him down and made it an impossible task. Since Lu was not allowed to leave China and could not get an exit visa from the government, Lu secretly traveled to Thailand in 2004 to then fly to Canada . In August 2004 he left Liuyang and hiked over the mountains and through the jungle to Burma . From Burma, he managed to get to Bangkok , although it took over two months. When he arrived in Bangkok, he advocated the release of Yu Dongyue. Thai officials arrested Lu in December 2004 at the urging of the Chinese government, which wanted Lu to be extradited and immediately returned to China. Lu spent over a year in the Thai prison. The Thai authorities released him in 2006 and arrived in Vancouver on April 11, 2006 with the help of a private group of people who worked with the Canadian government and supported him as a refugee under a resettlement program of the United Nations High Commissioners. His family has joined Lu in Calgary. Lu is in Denise Chong's book Egg on Mao: The Tale of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship , published in 2009.

literature

• Denise Chong: Egg on Mao: a story of love, hope and defiance. Random House, Mississauga 2011, ISBN 978-0-3073-5580-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Chinese writer goes on trial over articles put on Internet , in: The New York Times , accessed November 30, 2017.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Xiu Lu: Interview with One of the 'Three Gentlemen at Tiananmen' ( Memento of May 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Epoch Times .
3. ^ Canadians win freedom for Chinese dissident. The Globe and Mail , accessed November 30, 2017.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Calgary man is Tiananmen Square 'hero'. , accessed November 30, 2017.
5. ↑ Lu Decheng's claim. The Globe and Mail , accessed December 1, 2017.