Police detain two democracy activists in central China

Wed, 02 Feb 2011

Beijing - Police have detained two well-known democracy activists in the central province of Hubei, sources said Wednesday.

Yao Lifa was reportedly kidnapped by six people and held in a hotel in Nanchang city, some 300 kilometers from his hometown of Qianjiang, his wife said.

"This morning someone called me to say they had found a note," Feng Ling told the German Press Agency dpa by telephone from Qianjiang.

The unidentified caller told her they picked up the note on the street in Nanchang and followed the instructions to call her, she said.

Feng said she had asked police officers in Qianjiang about Yao's disappearance but when told that he was reportedly held in Nanchang they said it was "not our business."

She said she had not seen Yao since he was taken away by Qianjiang police on Monday.

In the note, Yao reportedly said he was held in the Bairui Lijing Hotel close to Nanchang's long-distance bus station.

A hotel receptionist told dpa by telephone that she was not aware of Yao or a group of police officers staying there.

Yao, 52, is a legal activist who specializes in local elections and was one of the 303 signatories who issued the Charter '08 for democratic reform in late 2008.

Police in the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan Tuesday sentenced another prominent democracy activist, Qin Yongmin, to 10 days of "administrative detention."

The sentence means that Qin, a founder of the banned China Democracy Party, will be away from his family for the first Chinese new year holiday since he was freed in November after 12 years in prison.

The China Human Rights Defenders said Qin, 57, told the group Tuesday that he believed his detention was ordered to prevent his friends from visiting him over the holiday.

The detentions of Qin and Yao come amid a crackdown on dissidents since the award in October of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to jailed writer and Charter '08 organizer Liu Xiaobo.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/365479,democracy-activists-central-china.html.