BEIJING — Chinese police have filed subversion charges against another human rights activist, his wife said on March 30, the latest move against dissent since anonymous online calls urged Chinese to imitate pro-democracy protests in North Africa and the Middle East.
Wang Xiaoyan, the wife of Chen Wei, said she received a notice Tuesday morning saying her husband had been formally arrested by police in Suining city in Sichuan province for "inciting subversion of state power." Activists say Chen was detained in February for reposting Internet calls for protests styled after those in the Middle East.
Phone calls to the police rang unanswered Wednesday.
China often uses the vaguely worded charge of inciting subversion of state power to lock up outspoken government critics.
Though the Internet calls for Chinese to stage protests every Sunday have not drawn any overt protesters, the authoritarian government has reacted strongly. Human rights groups says more than 100 bloggers, lawyers and activists have been detained. As well, several prominent civil rights lawyers have disappeared, a tactic that has become more common against government critics.
Earlier this week, the wife of blogger and writer Ran Yunfei said she had received a notice saying subversion charges had been filed against him. Before being taken away last month, Ran, who also lives in Sichuan, wrote online for more than a decade, frequently criticizing government policies and calling for tolerance for dissenting views.
The charges also come after a United Nations committee urged Beijing to release a prominent human rights lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, who has been missing for nearly a year.
The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said Gao’s detention violates international law because the government failed to meet minimum international standards for due process. It urged Beijing "for reparation for the harm caused."
The U.N. request came in July but was made public Monday by Freedom Now, a U.S.-based legal advocacy group.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Tuesday that she was not aware of the specifics of Gao’s case, and said China "attaches importance" to cooperating with the U.N. human rights’ monitoring mechanism. She urged it to respect China’s "judicial sovereignty."
Gao represented religious dissenters, including members of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, and advocated constitutional reform until run-ins with the authorities and lengthy detentions began in 2006.
