BEIJING (AFP) - A Chinese court awarded damages to the mother of a rape victim after she was sent to a labour camp for demanding her daughter's attackers be punished, a spokesman said on Monday.
Tang Hui, who became a figurehead for critics of the "re-education through labour" system after she was condemned to 18 months in a camp, won a total of 2,641 yuan ($430) following an appeal, a court spokesman surnamed Zhang told AFP.
The court in Changsha, the capital of the central province of Hunan, awarded compensation on the grounds that local authorities had violated Tang's personal freedom and caused her "psychological damage", Zhang said.
But it rejected Tang's demand that the police who sentenced her write a formal apology, because the "relevant people had apologised in court", he added.
The police chief of Yongzhou, who headed the committee that sentenced Tang, said during the hearing that he had "not acted with enough humanity or care", Tang told AFP earlier this month.
She was released last August after just over a week in a labour camp following a public outcry over her case, which was given unusual prominence in state-run media and prompted speculation that the system would be abolished.
The compensation award comes as a surprise after Tang lost her initial case. She herself had estimated the chance of success in her appeal as a "remote possibility".
Tang's daughter, 11 at the time, was kidnapped, raped and forced into prostitution in 2006, prompting Tang to seek to bring to justice the abductors and the police she says protected them.
Seven men were finally convicted in June last year, with two condemned to death, four given life sentences and one jailed for 15 years, but Tang continued to agitate for the policemen to face trial, and soon afterwards she was sentenced for "seriously disturbing social order and exerting a negative impact on society".
China's re-education through labour system gives police the right to hand out sentences of up to four years without a judicial trial.
Premier Li Keqiang said in March that the system would be "reformed", without giving further details.
US-based advocacy group the Dui Hua Foundation said on its website last month that some re-education through labour facilities had been "quietly taking formal steps to transition into compulsory drug treatment centres", citing local media reports.

The United States Supreme Court has struck down part a federal law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. In its second ruling, the court paved the way for gay marriage in California.

In a 5-4 vote, the US Supreme Court ruled part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) - which did not recognize homosexual couples as equal to heterosexual couples under the law - unconstitutional. The ruling now makes homosexual partners eligible for the same legal benefits given to heterosexual couples under federal law.

The law had imposed "a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of the states," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. Twelve states and the District of Columbia currently allow same-sex unions.

"Under DOMA, same-sex married couples have their lives burdened, by reason of government decree, in visible and public ways," Kennedy wrote.

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by former President Bill Clinton, defined marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman.

The case before the Supreme Court was brought by Edith Windsor, whose marriage to Thea Spyer was recognized under New York law, but not under federal law because of DOMA. When Spyer died in 2009, Windsor was forced to pay estate tax worth $363,000 (284,000 euros) because her marriage was not recognized by the federal government. She later sued, seeking a refund.

Windsor's lawyers argued that the US government had no role in defining marriage, which is traditionally left to the states.

President Barack Obama praised the decision: "This was discrimination enshrined in law. It treated loving, committed gay and lesbian couples as a separate and lesser class of people."

"[The Supreme Court] has righted a wrong, and our country is better off for it," he said, adding that he had already told officials in his administration to begin working toward implementing the changes to the current federal law.

Court favors California judge

The second landmark case before the court sought to establish whether California had illegally banned gay marriage in a 2008 referendum, known as Proposition 8. The change came shortly after the California Supreme Court had already ruled it legal.

On Wednesday, the justices of the United States' highest court declined to rule on the constitutionality of Proposition 8. Instead, they voted 5-4 that the defenders of the ban did not have the legal standing to appear before the Supreme Court and appeal lower court rulings which had already struck down the gay marriage ban.

"We have no authority to decide this case on the merits, and neither did the 9^th Circuit," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, referring to a federal appeals court which had favored the plaintiffs.

By sidestepping a broad ruling, the top court allowed the ruling from the initial trial to remain intact, thereby paving the way for Californian officials to reinstate the legislation which allows same-sex couples to wed.

kms/dr (AP, AFP, Reuters)