Chinese woman brought to US as nanny treated like slave

This photo provided by the Washington County Jail shows Lili Huang

A Minnesota woman is charged with beating and starving a woman she brought from China to work as a nanny, holding her in a state of “slavery or indentured servitude,” a prosecutor said.
Lili Huang, 35, of Woodbury is charged in Washington County with five felony counts, including labor trafficking, false imprisonment and assault. Huang remains in jail after making her initial court appearance Friday, the Star Tribune reported.
The 58-year-old woman, who is not named in the complaint, arrived in the U.S. on a visa in late March. According to the complaint, the nanny was forced to work up to 18 hours a day doing child care, cooking and cleaning. Police calculate her pay at about USD1.80 an hour, but she apparently did not receive any of it.
The woman recently was found wandering in the street, her eyes blackened. A hospital exam found she had many broken bones.
She was rationed crackers for meals and her weight had dropped from 120 pounds when she arrived in the U.S. to 88 pounds, the complaint said.
The woman was never allowed to leave the house, the complaint said. The nanny told a police investigator she eventually fled the house when Huang threatened to kill her with a knife. She told police she was looking for the airport so she could go home to China, the complaint said.
Washington County prosecutor Pete Orput said the nanny was held in appalling conditions, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported.
Dan Le, a Minneapolis attorney for Huang, did not immediately respond to a phone message and email from The Associated Press on Saturday.
Police from four cities and agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security searched Huang’s home and arrested her, the complaint said.
A bag hidden under the nanny’s mattress contained a large amount of her hair, which Huang allegedly ripped from the woman’s head. The nanny had been hiding it so Huang wouldn’t find it “and force her to eat it,” the complaint said. AP

PRC to prosecute rights lawyer, 3 activists for subversion

A human rights lawyer and three activists have been indicted on subversion charges, Chinese prosecutors said Friday, signaling that an unprecedented crackdown on legal activism that began one year ago continues despite international criticism.
The prosecutors’ office of the municipality of Tianjin posted on its microblog that Zhou Shifeng, a lawyer who heads a Beijing-based firm seen as being at the center of the security sweep, has been charged with subversion of state power. Three activists were indicted on the same charge, the prosecutors’ office said.
The vaguely defined charge carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
China launched its largest-ever crackdown against human rights lawyers and activists on July 9, 2015, seizing and questioning hundreds of people nationwide in a campaign that sent a chill through the country’s legal system. Nearly two dozen of them remain in detention and face charges, including subversion and inciting subversion of state power.
Rights groups say the activists are being targeted for organizing protests and social media campaigns to raise awareness of legal rights and hot-button social issues.
On the one-year anniversary of the crackdown last week, overseas bar associations and lawyers’ groups issued an open letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping criticizing the detentions. The letter adds to international expressions of concern, including from some Western governments, over the crackdown. AP