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Chinese activist Lu Gengsong arrested for 'subversion'

"The charges are groundless ... The provincial and city governments just want to make him shut up ... He disclosed lots of illegal eviction cases related to provincial and city officials who colluded with real estate developers."

Wang Xue'e, Lu Gengsong's wife

China has formally arrested writer and cyber-dissident Lu Gengsong (呂耿松), a former lecturer turned activist, on suspicion of subverting state power, his wife said yesterday.

Lu's wife, Wang Xue'e (汪雪娥), received the arrest warrant early on Sunday, she said from her home in Hangzhou.

"The charges are groundless," she said. "The provincial and city governments just want to make him shut up."

Lu was picked up at his home in August, in what rights groups said was part of a crackdown ahead of this month's Communist Party five-yearly Congress and the Beijing Olympics.

Lu, a 51-year-old freelance writer, has published extensively on graft, including the book Corrupted Officials in China, which appeared in Hong Kong in 2000.

"He disclosed lots of illegal eviction cases related to provincial and city officials who colluded with real estate developers," Wang said.

Evictions have emerged as one of the main social issues in modern China, as land developers and home owners battle it out over increasingly scarcer land resources.

Despite China's pledge to ease curbs on media and individual freedoms ahead of the 2008 Olympics, human and media rights groups say the leaders in Beijing continue to tighten their crackdown on dissent amid increasing social unrest.

Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said in a report in August that as many as 30 journalists and 50 cyber-dissidents were being detained in China for work that angered Chinese authorities.

The watchdog ranks China 163rd out of 167 countries on its global press freedom index.
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