A Chinese dissident who criticized authorities has been detained on charges of allegedly possessing state secrets, his mother and a human rights organization said yesterday.
Huang Qi (黃琦), founder of the human rights Web site 64Tianwang, was detained in Chengdu, his 74-year-old mother, Pu Wenqing, said.
“They didn’t say when he would be freed, first they have to do an investigation,” she said.
Pu said she is unable to talk to Huang, and was informed by the police of the arrest on Monday. Possession of state secrets is an ill-defined term often used to clamp down on dissent.
A man at the publicity department of the Chengdu public security bureau said they don’t accept interviews and referred calls to the propaganda department. The phone went unanswered at the propaganda office of Chengdu’s Communist Party committee.
The watchdog group Human Rights in China said yesterday that Huang was detained last Tuesday after visiting areas affected by the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan and writing about parents who lost their children.
“This is another illustration of how a person who is only trying to help might find himself snared by China’s state secrets laws,” executive director Sharon Hom said in a statement. “This use of the law as a sword hanging over rights activists, like Huang Qi, contradicts the reported ‘new media openness’ in China following the Sichuan earthquake.”
The Paris-based rights monitoring group Reporters Without Borders said last week that three men, likely agents from the Ministry of State Security, forced Huang to get into a car. It said his disappearance may be linked to articles he has posted criticizing the government’s response to the quake that killed almost 70,000 people.
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