BACK HOME: Tang Hui on the bus for home in Changsha City, capital of central China's Hunan Province, on August 11, after her release from a correctional facility (LONG HONGTAO)

On August 10, Tang Hui, the mother of an underage rape victim who petitioned the government concerning the handling of her daughter's case, was released from a re-education-through-labor center in central China's Hunan Province amid nationwide concern.

Tang was sent to the correctional facility in Zhuzhou City, 280 km from her hometown in the province's Yongzhou City, on August 2, to serve an 18-month sentence of re-education through labor for "seriously disturbing social order and exerting a negative impact on society" after she petitioned for justice in front of local government buildings.

For the last six years, the 39-year-old mother had been petitioning for death sentences for those responsible for kidnapping, raping and forcing her daughter into prostitution. Tang also demands an investigation of alleged malpractice of police officers involved in her daughter's case.

Tang filed an appeal to repeal her detention on August 7. After considering her appeal, a provincial committee on the management of re-education-through-labor affairs overturned the decision against Tang, citing that Tang's daughter, now 17, is still a minor and requires her mother's custody.

On August 6, the Hunan Provincial Government sent a work team to Yongzhou to investigate whether local police had falsified evidence in order to reduce the punishment of convicts during the trial stage, as Tang claimed, and whether the decision to send Tang to a correctional center is justified.

The nightmare for Tang's family started on October 3, 2006, when her 11-year-old daughter went missing. After searching for her daughter for two months, Tang found out that the girl had been abducted and forced into prostitution at a local night club. After she was rescued by her parents on December 30, 2006, Tang's daughter told the police that she had been forced to perform more than 100 sexual acts over the three months. According to a forensic psychiatry report in 2007, the torments endured left the girl suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Giving up the family's business of running an eatery, Tang became a full-time petitioner for harsh punishment for those responsible for her daughter's tragedy. While the case was tried four times between June 2008 and June 2010, Tang was put under administrative detention by local police for "disrupting public order" three times in 2010.

On June 5, the Hunan Provincial Higher People's Court delivered a final verdict on seven people charged with forcing Tang's daughter into prostitution: two were sentenced to death, four were given life sentences and another one received a 15-year prison term. This last verdict carried the harshest penalties for the convicts.

Still unsatisfied with the verdict and the fact that some police officers dealing with her daughter's case were not punished for malpractice, Tang continued to petition by kneeling in front of government buildings and in busy streets.

Within a few days after Tang's lawyer Gan Yuanchun publicized information about her detention on the Internet, Tang earned a nickname: petitioning mum. While netizens' sympathy has played a role in pressuring local police authorities to review Tang's case, her experience also made legal experts question the necessity of China's re-education-through-labor system, which has existed for 55 years.

Under fire

Yu Jianrong, an expert on China's rural development from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the re-education-through-labor system has outlived its necessity and legitimacy with the development of rule of law in China. "It should be eliminated immediately," he said.

As an administrative detention system introduced to punish minor offenders in 1957, sentencing people for re-education through labor is carried out by a special committee set under police authorities. Detainees can seek to have their detention repealed through an administrative review of the decision. They can also file an administrative litigation against the committee that ratified their detention and demand a defense attorney.