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China's Silencing Season
Activist Huang Qi is among dozens of writers and lawyers detained during a pre-Olympics crackdown on dissent. Among off-limits topics: complaints from grieving parents that schools that collapsed in the May quake, killing thousands of children, were poorly built, above.
(Undated Family Photo)
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Pu hopped into a taxi, he recalled in a telephone interview, but it was quickly blocked by three unmarked police cars. Officials pulled Pu out and stuffed him into a vehicle. His watch and cellphone were smashed in the scuffle.
"I remember thinking this might happen, since at dinner Huang Qi realized we were followed," Pu said. "But I was still very, very angry. What they did was totally beyond all reason, very inhumane and uncivilized."
In the car, "they used their feet to press my head down between the front and back seats," Pu said, so he could not see where he was being taken.
After three days in a detention chamber, Pu was moved to what looked to be a hotel room at a resort, he said, with a single bed and an attached bath. At least two guards were in the room with him at all times.
He was allowed to shower and sleep, but his food was limited -- only two steamed buns a day, with water. The guards prevented Pu from looking out the window.
He was told to read the Communist Party-run newspaper, People's Daily, and forced to watch an endless loop of propaganda video showing people the government considers heroes rescuing earthquake victims. Pu had recently traveled with Huang to the quake zone, distributing water and other essentials to victims and talking with parents whose children had died in collapsing schools.
Pu's captors read, played games and listened to music, he said; he was stuck watching the video. They told him it was a "law study seminar" intended to correct his misconceptions about the law, Pu said.
Various interrogators came and went, asking the same questions over and over: "How did you meet Huang Qi?" "Who did you meet in the earthquake areas?" "Were you in contact with any overseas people?"
"Mostly I didn't answer," Pu said.
After 12 days, he was shoved back in a car, his head again held down between the seats. He was driven for two or three hours before being pushed out of the car at a sports stadium in Chengdu. His captors warned him not to talk about what had happened.
Fuming, Pu walked to his office at a computer company. There, he was told he had been fired. Police had confiscated his computer and hard drive.
"I wasn't afraid, because I have faith in democracy and freedom," Pu said. "When Mr. Huang is out, I might still work with him."
