“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” reenacted in real life in China.
Xu Wu, a fireman, has been detained in a psychiatric hospital for four years over a labour dispute against a state-run enterprise in Wuhan, Hubei province.
He escaped from the hospital and told his story to a television station in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. Police forced their way into the station building and abducted Xu back to the psychiatric ward.
The story of Xu Wu
Xu Wu was once a firefighter in a large state-owned company in Hubei province – the Wuhan Iron and Steel Group. In 2000, as a workers’ representative, he started a legal battle with the factory, which offered to settle the case with RMB 30,000 in compensation.
Xu rejected the offer and chose to petition his way to Beijing in December 2006. His local district government then forced Xu’s family to sign a document which declared him insane. Xu has been detained in a psychiatric hospital ever since.
On April 19, 2011, Xu escaped from the psychiatric hospital and traveled to Guangzhou where he testified to the Southern television station that he had been illegally detained in a hospital for the mentally ill for four years. During his stay in Guangzhou, he visited the Guangzhou Psychiatric Hospital for a second diagnosis.
However, before the test results were issued, a group of unidentified men claiming to be Wuhan police officers abducted Xu while still inside the station campus and escorted him back to Wuhan. Read a translation of a news piece telling Xu’s story at the Ministry of Tofu blog.
Both the police and the hospital refused to let Xu’s parents see their son. Click the video to see Xu Wu’s mother yelling outside the hospital, telling her son not to be scared:
The clip was deleted from Sina Video and other main video sharing websites in China before this post was published, however can still be viewed on YouTube.
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