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New Arrest as China Pushes Crackdown on Rights Advocates

Originally published by The New York Times,March 30, 2011

 By EDWARD WONG

 BEIJING — A rights activist in Sichuan has been formally arrested and charged with inciting subversion against the state, according to a statement on Wednesday by China Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group that tracks violations by the Chinese government. The advocate, Chen Wei, was charged on Monday, and his family was notified on Tuesday.

Mr. Chen is the third person in recent days to be charged with inciting subversion in an extraordinarily harsh crackdown on progressives in China that has been unfolding since late February. The other two, Ran Yunfei and Ding Mao, are also from Sichuan and are known, like Mr. Chen, to be promoters of rule of law and democracy-oriented reforms.

Parts of Sichuan Province, a rugged, populous area in western China, are known to be havens for liberal thinkers, and the region has had a long literary and philosophical tradition. The authorities there are now at the forefront of pressing charges against people advocating political reform.

On Friday, a court in Sichuan sentenced Liu Xianbin, a veteran democracy activist, to 10 years in prison for slandering the Communist Party in his writings; Mr. Liu has been imprisoned before and was detained in June, before the current clampdown.

The recent wave of disappearances and detentions began when a Chinese-language Web site hosted in the United States posted a call in late February for frustrated Chinese to take to the streets in a so-called Jasmine Revolution to protest corruption and unjust rule. The Chinese government, fearing the kinds of protests that have swept through the Middle East, has apparently ordered that any signs of dissent be nipped in the bud.

China Human Rights Defenders estimates that at least 23 people have been detained for criminal investigation. ChinaGeeks.org, an English-language Web site based in Beijing, compiled a list this week of about 50 Chinese who have been recently detained, formally arrested or made to disappear; the list is based on various reports and is incomplete.

One person on the list is Yang Hengjun, an Australian spy novelist and pro-democracy blogger who went missing on Sunday after reportedly making a call from the airport in the southern city of Guangzhou; he had said three men were following him. The Australian government said on Tuesday that it was concerned about Mr. Yang’s whereabouts, and one friend in Australia said Mr. Yang, a former employee of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, had indicated over the telephone to his sister that he had been taken away by security officers.

On Wednesday, the mystery over Mr. Yang deepened when at least three friends of Mr. Yang said on their microblogs that he had telephoned them that morning to say he was in a hospital. He had been unable to charge his cell phone and had not made any calls earlier, he said, but would explain everything in a few days. One friend, Li Huizhi, wrote that Mr. Yang had said everything was “a misunderstanding.” Another friend, Wu Jiaxiang, told Reuters that Mr. Yang coughed a few times.

“It’s impossible for me to say whether Yang was really in the hospital,” he said.

The cryptic calls made by Mr. Yang have fueled theories among many of his supporters that he is being held by the state at a secret site.

 

Li Bibo contributed research.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/world/asia/31china.html?_r=1&ref=china