A second blind Chinese activist has escaped state custody, a Hong Kong human rights group said, three months after dissident Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠) embarrassed Beijing’s vast security network by breaking out of detention and obtaining US protection.
Chinese Citizens’ Rights Protection Alliance said 57-year-old Li Guizhi, detained at the border in Shenzhen for trying to enter Hong Kong to join a large pro-democracy protest on July 1, had escaped custody this week with the help of her relatives.
Li had been petitioning authorities for years to investigate the death of her son, who died suddenly in 2006 and was quickly cremated, the alliance said.
She never saw her son’s dead body.
She had wanted to enter Hong Kong to petition her cause at a march held to mark the anniversary of Britain’s 1997 handover of the territory back to China, the alliance added.
Li was subsequently held in a hotel room in Hebei Province weeks later and, when her guards were dozing, her relatives sneaked her out of the building, Liu Weiping (劉衛平), a spokesman for the alliance said late on Thursday.
“On July 17, at about 5am, she managed to escape her hotel room with help from her relatives. They [police] are now pressuring her family to hand her over,” Liu said.
Chinese police were not immediately available for comment.
Chinese domestic security have suffered some humiliating lapses this year, culminating in April with the daring escape from house arrest of Chen, a blind legal activist who slipped past his guards and traveled hundreds of kilometers to Beijing, where he secured protection inside the US embassy.
He later flew to New York with his family under a deal negotiated between Washington and Beijing.
Li is now in a “safe place” in her native Hebei Province — close to Chen’s own Shandong Province — but her relatives fear police will catch up with her soon, Liu said.
Liu said Li had been detained repeatedly since 2006.
“Her health is in a terrible state ... and she has asthma. Her asthma played up when they caught her,” he added.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS