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Chinese activist held incommunicado

A Chinese activist who witnessed a clash between farmers and police in which one person was reportedly killed has been taken away and warned by police not to speak with the media, his friends said yesterday.

Zhang Zilin (張子霖), a human-rights activist, was among the most outspoken witnesses to Monday's violent end to a protest against rising bus fares by 20,000 residents of the southern village of Zhushan, where an uneasy calm settled in.

Zhang told reporters that baton-wielding riot police beat the protesters -- including women, children and the elderly -- who fought back with bricks and rocks.

On Tuesday night, Zhang was continuing to talk by phone with reporters and human-rights activists when police and officials confronted him.

He began shouting "They're coming'" and his phone was temporarily disconnected, said fellow activist Wen Yan (溫豔).

Another activist, Ding Yi, said Zhang told him yesterday morning he was being held in an undisclosed location.

"He said he did not have any freedom and had been told by police and government officials not to speak with the media," said Ding, who along with Zhang and Wen are part of an informal network of human-rights activists.

Protests have risen sharply across China in recent years as ordinary Chinese vent anger over official corruption, a yawning rich-poor gap and land confiscations.

On Sunday, in Guangdong Province, police dispersed 1,000 protesters in Dongzhou in the latest standoff in a long-running land dispute, the New York-based Human Rights Watch reported yesterday.

Officials in Hunan Province, where Zhushan is located, appeared to be applying standard procedures in suppressing the protest sparked by the doubling of bus fares, calling in riot police and trying to silence activists.

Villagers said yesterday that the area was still sealed off and policemen were patrolling the streets.

Police had put up notices asking people who participated in the demonstration to turn themselves in.

Zhang's cellphone either rang busy or was turned off on yesterday. Telephone calls to police and government officials in Zhushan and Yongzhou were not answered.

"I don't dare step out of my home," said a villager surnamed Li, who refused to give his full name or other details for fear of retaliation.

The Xinhua news agency issued an account sharply at odds with that of witnesses who had said a student was killed in Monday's melee.

Xinhua said that no one had died in the clash and that peace had been restored and "local life has resumed."

Such conflicting accounts are common in China, where officials often seek to cover up misdeeds or to restore calm and where ordinary Chinese tend to believe rumor over the government-controlled media.
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