2015-04-10
Chinese netizens at an Internet cafe in Quanzhou, south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Sept. 29, 2011.
ImagineChina
Authorities in the southern province of Guangdong are widening the net in an ongoing crackdown on critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party with the detention of an Internet user for “rumor-mongering,” activists and their relatives said on Friday.
Liu Sifang was taken away from his home in the provincial capital Guangzhou in the early hours of Friday morning on suspicion of “using the Internet to spread rumors,” his wife told RFA.
Liu, whose detention was linked to a tweet he had sent about the detention of fellow activist Ou Bo, was then taken by police to the town in the southwestern province of Sichuan where he was born, in spite of the fact that he now lives and works in Guangzhou, Lu Lina said.
Police had also searched the couple’s home and confiscated their computers, Lu said.
“They grabbed hold of me and one of them wrenched the computer away from me,” she said. “I chased them as far as the stairwell to try to get it back, but one of them pinned me to the ground.”
“I was very angry, and I instinctively tried to bite him,” Lu said.
Lu said police, only one of whom wore a uniform, offered no documents or ID, but simply told Liu he was being detained for questioning.
Liu later said he had been released under escort from the local police station, but declined to talk for long, suggesting he was still under close surveillance.
“I’m not exactly free,” Liu said. “They are sending me back [to Sichuan] and I’m on the way there now…It’s not convenient for me to talk right now.”
Another activist detained
On the same day, Guangzhou-based activist Jia Pin was intercepted on his way to visit friends in Guangdong’s Dongguan city and told to leave the area, he said.
“I was taken by three people, acting in the name of state security, to the Bubugao police station in Dongcheng district of Dongguan at around 9 a.m.,” Jia told RFA on Friday.
“The municipal state security police there asked me what I had come to Dongguan for, who I was seeing, and when I planned to leave,” Jia said.
