Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - December 29, 2007
Hu Jia's whereabouts were not known after he was seized by about 20 officers Thursday, said China Human Rights Defenders, an international network of activists and rights monitoring groups. Hu has played a prominent role in helping other dissidents.
Hu was charged with "subverting state power," lawyer and friend Teng Biao said. The charge and other vague accusations have been used against Chinese activists, many of whom also have been detained, threatened or harassed.
Police cut telephone lines and Internet access at the home to prevent Hu's wife Zeng Jinyan - also an AIDS activist - from contacting others, the group said.
"There's a lot of state security officers at his house and in his apartment complex," Teng said. "Phones, Internet are all cut off - everything's been cut off."
China's authoritarian government has taken great pains to ensure the upcoming Beijing Olympics portrays a flawless image of the country, and has increasingly clamped down on those who criticize its heavy-handed policies.
Calls to Hu's and Zeng's mobile phones Saturday indicated they had been turned off.
Hu was placed under house arrest in May after he and Zeng tried to go to Europe to meet other activists for discussions on China's human rights situation.
China's Ministry of Public Security and the Beijing Public Security Bureau asked for faxed requests for information about Hu's case, to which they did not respond.
News about Hu's detention came as a U.S.-funded broadcaster reported a lawyer jailed for publishing a book about a political scandal in northeast China had been beaten by a fellow prisoner and was staging a hunger strike.
Guo Feixiong, serving a five-year sentence for conducting illegal business activities, had been placed in solitary confinement at the prison in southern China's Guangdong province and was barred from reading, his wife Zhang Qing told Radio Free Asia after visiting Guo on Friday.
He was staging the 100-day hunger strike, which began Dec. 13, to protest the deprivation of his rights, she said.
"He told me they have been force-feeding him and that his daily intake is about one-quarter of a normal person's daily intake. He looked very thin, very pale," Zhang told RFA.
An operator at the Meizhou Prison in Guangdong province said no one was available Saturday evening to answer questions about Guo's case.
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