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| Beijing: Chinese paramilitary police officers patrol in front of Beijing's Great Hall of the People on Sunday. Greg Baker/AP |
In China, new crackdown on dissidents
Scores of arrests are to ensure a protest-free Party Congress, say rights groups.
from the October 15, 2007 edition
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That is what Li Heping, a dapper young lawyer who has made a name for himself defending dissidents, says he believes happened to him on Sept. 29.
After leaving his office in the company of one of the policemen who has been shadowing him for months, he says, he was forced into a car by four men in civilian clothes, who covered his head with a piece of cloth and drove him to an unknown destination.
In what appeared to be a basement, he says he was beaten unconscious by men armed with tire irons and electric cattle prods. He was then released in the middle of the night in woods outside Beijing with a warning to leave the capital and give up his law practice.
"The government says it wants a harmonious society, but what happened to me was a slap in the face for the rule of law," Mr. Li says. "The trouble is that when people demand that the government respect their rights, and the government cannot do that, then they are seen as enemies."
Other such "enemies" caught up in the current crackdown include one of Li's clients, Gao Zhisheng, another lawyer who recently wrote an open letter to the US Senate in favor of greater freedoms in China and who has not been seen or heard from since Sept. 22 when police raided his home.
A well known election activist, Yao Lifa, has been missing from his home in Hubei Province since last Sunday, according to his son. Family members told reporters that Ye Guozhu, who has protested the eviction of tenants to make way for Olympics projects, has been held, along with his brother and son.
Anonymous victims include scores of petitioners whose shelters have been destroyed in recent weeks and who have been taken into custody. Reuters news agency last month revealed the existence of a secret detention center in Beijing run by officials from the town of Nanyang in Henan Province where more than a dozen petitioners were being held in a two-story cell block.
A "dry run" for the Olympics?
"We really have no idea how many" people have been detained in recent weeks, says Kine, "because so many of them are marginalized and do not appear on the radar" of human rights organizations.
Human Rights Watch is worried, Kine adds, that "this might be a dry run for the Olympics," when the government will also be concerned to keep potential troublemakers out of public view.
"They have the template," he says. "Given the relative success they have had in sweeping people off the streets this time, there is no reason why they won't do it again ahead of the Olympics."
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