Growing up, Tim Hunt looked forward to making his little sister laugh every night before bed in their South Side home. But when he visited her at a Chinese prison in July, he couldn’t get Dawn Michelle Hunt to crack a smile.
Glass separated them. Armed guards hovered over them. And a woman with headphones diligently took notes in a corner.
“Everything is different. Everything about her is different. She’s lost weight. Her hair is all gray,” said her brother, a retired Chicago police officer. His 53-year-old sister also has tumors on her uterus and ovaries, a possible symptom of cancer.
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Dawn Michelle Hunt, a Chicago native, is serving a life sentence in Guangdong Women’s Prison. She’s the victim of an elaborate drug trafficking scheme, according to her family, who’ve been trying to bring her home since she was arrested a decade ago. Tim Hunt has written letters to his elected officials. Her younger brother, Chris, a truck driver, has tried to provide her with emotional support over the phone. Their father, Gene, also a retired police officer, hired an attorney in China.
On Wednesday, Tim Hunt is scheduled to make his first public plea for his sister’s return at a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C. She is one of at least 200 Americans unjustly trapped in China, according to John Kamm, founder of the U.S.-based prisoner release advocacy organization Dui Hua.
The Hunt family has hesitated to share her story with the media, fearing retaliation from the Chinese government and believing it was her story to share when she got home. But now, as her health declines and the U.S. government does not seem poised to negotiate with China, the Hunts feel they have no choice.
“There’s no playbook to this,” Tim Hunt said, partially to reassure himself that going public with his sister’s story was a good idea and partially to explain why it’s taken him so long to do so.
Their decision to speak out was bolstered by a letter Dawn Hunt wrote on Aug. 13, 2021, refusing medical care from the Chinese prison for her tumors.
“The American government has also sided with China,” said the handwritten note. “(It) did nothing for their own citizen and did not prevent me from coming to the (Chinese) prison but left me out to dry.”
Her case has not garnered as much attention as high-profile figures imprisoned abroad such as basketball player Brittney Griner and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia. Both returned home under the Biden administration.
“My sister isn’t famous. She’s not some athlete. She’s not a journalist. She’s just a middle-class woman who likes fashion and went to the Chicago Art Institute,” he told the Tribune.
In 2014, she was working as a receptionist in Chicago and living with their father in the Douglas neighborhood. She loved raffles and lotteries, a knack she picked up from her late mother. So, Gene Hunt wasn’t surprised when his only daughter told him she was going on an all-expenses-paid trip to Australia.
Tim Hunt learned about her trip when he got a call from the U.S. State Department. During a stopover in China to supposedly pick up prize documents, Dawn had been arrested for possession of 4 ½ pounds of methamphetamines. The drugs were lined in handbags she was given as a gift during the stopover, according to Chinese authorities.
“I equate it to getting the phone call that someone passed away,” her brother said.
The U.S. government, however, does not recognize her as one of the two Americans “wrongfully detained” in China, an official designation that provides families with access to special support services.
The State Department declined to share how it determines the discretionary designation due to privacy concerns but said it provides consular assistance to all detained Americans regardless of their official status.
Meanwhile, advocates say not publicly recognizing the total number of Americans imprisoned in China hides the scope of the problem. They’ve been frustrated that the Biden administration successfully negotiated the release of several Americans detained in Russia and Iran but made little headway in China.
“There is absolutely no legal impediment to bringing Americans home,” said Jason Poblete, an international security lawyer who represents Americans detained in China and elsewhere. “It’s a lack of political and moral courage that is holding us back.”
Then, just last weekend, the State Department announced David Lin, a 68-year-old pastor imprisoned since 2006, was released by the Chinese government. Until Sunday, the State Department also considered him a wrongful detainee.
Kamm suspects the U.S. government played a role in Lin’s release but cautions that it is not grounds for optimism. The Chinese released one prisoner during Donald Trump’s administration, and now one under President Joe Biden. Kamm does not foresee better prospects of a large-scale Chinese prisoner release under either a Trump or Kamala Harris administration, citing that neither presidential candidate has said they’d prioritize it.
Tim Hunt hopes his testimony on Wednesday ignites a new fire under lawmakers to help his sister and the hundreds of other Americans detained in China. Otherwise, she will likely remain imprisoned on murky grounds.
Their father went to China in 2017 when a judge sentenced Dawn to death, despite acknowledging that she was likely an unknowing drug trafficking victim. The judge said she should have realized it was a ploy.
During the same visit, Dawn Hunt told her father she had been raped by guards in the detention center where she was awaiting sentencing for three years.
Her sentence has since been commuted to life, but her brother says her conditions are still abysmal.
She is not allowed to read in her native language. Her family has tried to send the former textile design student fashion magazines, but they bounce back. She can only receive items produced in China and written in Chinese, Tim Hunt told the Tribune.
An emergency blood transfusion three years ago revealed she had tumors in her ovaries and uterus, according to a medical form the family received from the prison. The tumors may be cancerous but she has declined further examination.
“The Chinese government has lied to me so how can I trust the (Chinese) doctors to perform surgery on me and not kill me?” she asked in her August 2021 letter.
Gene Hunt said he has maintained an American health insurance plan for his daughter for five years.
“When she gets out, she needs the best medical procedures and care.”
She is supposedly on light-duty work because of her failing health but during her brother’s recent visit, she wouldn’t tell him what it entailed. Her assignments in the detention center included making lithium batteries, but she’s been less forthcoming about her circumstances since being transferred to prison in 2017, according to Tim Hunt.
She has also to ration her few time-constrained and monitored phone calls between her family, lawyer and the consular office. But, sometimes, Time feels he can truly connect with her on these short calls.
“Me and my sister, we’re both Black so I can talk this proper college-educated English with you and then I can talk hood with my kid sister,” he told the Tribune. “It sort of slips past the guards because they don’t know the idioms and things like that.”
It’s through these coded communications that he ultimately felt confident that she wanted him to bring her case to the public.
While Tim Hunt is in Washington testifying before congressional leaders Wednesday, Chris Hunt will be taking their father, now 90, to a doctor’s appointment in Chicago where he will learn if he has prostate cancer. After tirelessly fighting for his only daughter’s return for the last decade, his health is declining alongside hers.
“I’ve been praying for my daughter for 10 years, and one of my prayers has always been that we’ll be reunited,” said Gene Hunt, surrounded by artwork he’s made over the years and would like to sell to support her when she’s released. “I never gave up on that.”
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