BEIJING - It's shocking to imagine spending 16 years in jail for throwing eggshells full of paint at a portrait of a dead political figure.
But if that leader is Chairman Mao Zedong and the portrait is the focus of China's Communist Party iconography, prepare for serious repercussions.
Yu Dongyue, 38, a former arts journalist, left prison a broken, deranged man yesterday after serving a sentence for throwing the paint bombs at the Mao portrait on Tiananmen Square during the 1989 Tiananmen protests.
Fellow protesters were taken aback.
They grabbed Yu and his two fellow paint throwers and handed them over to security officials.
He was convicted of "sabotage" and "counter-revolutionary propaganda".
Yu's mind is gone from his long period in jail, during which time he was tortured, rights activists say.
His brother had to bring him home to his parents' house in Shegang in the southern province of Hunan, a seven-hour drive.
During his incarceration in Hunan Province's No 1 Prison he spent two years in solitary confinement, was given electric shocks, beaten and tortured in other ways.
His two colleagues, Lu Decheng and Yu Zhijian, have previously been released.
- INDEPENDENT
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