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Beijing: The young Chinese feminists shaved their heads to protest inequality in higher education and stormed men's restrooms to highlight the indignities women face in their prolonged waits at public toilets.
To publicise domestic violence, two prominent activists, Li Tingting and Wei Tingting, put on white wedding gowns, splashed them with r Media-savvy, fearless and well-connected to feminists outside China, the young activists over the past three years have taken their righteous indignation to the streets, pioneering a brand of guerrilla theatre familiar in the West but largely unheard of in this authoritarian nation.
Now five of them - core members of China's new feminist movement - sit in jail, accused of provoking social instability. One of the women, Wu Rongrong, 30, an AIDS activist, is said to be ailing after the police withheld the medication she takes for hepatitis. Another, Wang Man, 33, a gender researcher, was said to have had a mild heart attack while in custody.
Lawyers for the detainees, who include Zheng Churan, 25, affectionately known as Big Rabbit, say the women have been subjected to near-constant interrogation.
The women were detained early last month on the eve of International Women's Day as they planned a public awareness campaign about sexual harassment on public transportation.
Now, as security agents from Beijing fan out across the country hunting down the volunteers who took part in the women's theatrical protests, many young feminists have gone into hiding. "We're so afraid and confused", said one of them, Xiao Meili, 26, who recently completed a 1900-kilometre trek across China to draw attention to sexual violence. "We don't understand what we did wrong to warrant such a ferocious backlash".
the jailing of the five women has been noticed here. Word has spread across college campuses, and more than 1,100 people took the risky step last week of adding their names to a petition demanding the women's release
