Chinese dissident Huang Qi (黃琦), who campaigns for the parents of children killed in the Sichuan earthquake, has been arrested for “illegal possession of state secrets,” his wife said yesterday.
Qi was detained in the Sichuan Province capital of Chengdu on June 10 and has not been seen since.
“Yesterday afternoon, his mother went to the police station in Wuhou district [of Chengdu] and was given the arrest warrant,” his wife Zeng Li (曾麗) told reporters by telephone from the city in southwest China.
NO LEGAL COUNSEL
“His mother told them that since they had issued the arrest warrant, they should allow his lawyer to see Huang. But the police said that was not possible, that it would be another two months before the lawyer could ask to see him,” she said.
Huang’s lawyer, Mo Shaoping (莫少平), however, said the ruling was against the law and that he had the right to see his client, Zeng said.
Contacted by reporters, the Public Security Bureau in Wuhou said it did not know Huang’s current whereabouts.
Huang’s family said that the 44-year-old was arrested because he was supporting parents of children killed in the May 12 quake and had requested government figures.
The 8.0-magnitude earthquake in Sichuan on May 12 left nearly 87,000 people dead or missing, and millions more homeless, official reports said.
Many of the dead were children whose fate was linked to the poor construction of school buildings that collapsed while other structures withstood the earthquake.
Some parents alleged that local officials colluded with builders in a corrupt scheme to allow them to get way with cheap and shoddy work.
Several rights organizations have accused the Chinese government of arresting numerous opponents in the last few months to prevent them from disturbing the Olympic Games. Beijing has denied the charges.
SUBVERSION
Huang was jailed for subversion from 2000 to 2005 after he set up a Web site that independently investigated government corruption and advocated democracy.
The site had also called for the release of all those jailed for the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, which were crushed by the Chinese army.
Huang, who has received international awards for his efforts to publicize human rights violations in China, also listed missing persons on the site, mostly women and children kidnapped by human traffickers.
After being released, he resumed his rights work and opened the Tianwang Human Rights Centre, which claims to be the only non-government human rights organization in China.
Huang is on a list of seven Chinese political prisoners that the co-president of the Greens group in the European Parliament, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, sent to French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday.
He wants Sarkozy to demand the prisoners’ release during his visit to Beijing for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on August 8.
The French president himself made this proposal after Cohn-Bendit last week denounced Sarkozy in the European Parliament for his decision to go to the Chinese capital.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of