After six years and six months behind bars, 74-year-old Chinese human rights lawyer Li Yuhan is finally free.

While she was incarcerated, this elderly woman was subjected to inhumane abuse and mental torture. This included denying her essential medicines for serious diseases such as heart issues, forcing her to take ice baths and depriving her of food and water. Officers also humiliated her by urinating on her food.

Li suffered multiple heart attacks in prison and lost her ability to walk unaided. Her family’s multiple appeals to secure her release on medical parole were all rejected.

She was accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a public order crime that has long been used to imprison rights defenders, and of “fraud”.

According to Li’s lawyers, the evidence that she “picked quarrels and provoked trouble” was her repeated petitioning attempts in Beijing and Shenyang on behalf of her son. And her “fraud” charge? Well, that was attributed to her applications for financial assistance for her son’s mental disability.

One of her lawyers in 2017 that revealed details of her torture in detention was the late Li Baiguang. It would only be months later in February 2018 that he died in mysterious circumstances at a military hospital.