A central China villager is pleading for freedom after being locked up in a insane asylum for six and a half years by the local government he had complained against.

Xu Lindong, a villager from Daliu Town of Henan Province's Luohe City, wrote "Help me out!" on a piece of paper during an interview with reporters from China Youth Daily who disguised themselves as his family members and visited him at the Luohe Mental Hospital on Saturday.

He told the newspaper he was first put in Zhumadian City Mental Hospital in October 2003 by the township government after he visited Beijing to lodge complaints.

He was supporting his neighbor Zhang Guizhi in a land dispute between Zhang and the township government, because all Zhang's five family members were mentally or physically disabled, he told China Youth Daily.

Xu's own family didn't know about his hospitalization until July 2007, and learned of it only by accident.

The family requested the local government free Xu and pressed it by calling local media. The government then transferred him to the Luohe hospital last December, Xu said.

The township government has been covering his medical fees, around 1,500 yuan (US$220) a month, all these years, he said.

The Luohe hospital's vice director, Ding Hongyun, yesterday again rejected Xu's brother's request to discharge Xu, saying the family has no right to make the request. "It is all up to the township government," he said.

Ding indicated the government sent many other villagers to the hospital.

Xu said he attempted to escape from the hospital twice, but failed. He also tried to commit suicide several times. Xu told reporters he had been shackled 48 times and given electric shocks 54 times during his incarceration.

The hospital gave him injections to him that made him retarded, he said.

Lawyer Chang Boyang, who volunteered legal help for Xu, managed to obtain Xu's medical record from the Zhumadian hospital.

In the record, Xu was described as mentally healthy in the initial checks in October 2003. But he was diagnosed with paranoid mental disorders a month later. The reason: "He insists on getting out of the hospital to continue the complaint against the local government."