This article misidentified the affiliation of Nicholas Bequelin. He is a China researcher for Human Rights Watch.
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Defiant Chinese Harassed, Jailed Before Olympics
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Security forces seem determined to prevent those and other dissidents from finding an echo in the media, human rights activists said, particularly the foreign media that have been reinforced in China during the Olympic period. To do so, they said, authorities have devised a panoply of measures ranging from warnings, intimidation, surveillance, travel restrictions and house arrest to outright detention.
A well-known human rights activist in Beijing, for instance, sent this cellphone message Wednesday afternoon: "The police come to my place, waiting outside, and I do not know what they want to do with me." The activist was detained for 18 days last month on suspicion of planning protests during the Olympics. This time, she said, the police went away after she refused to leave home.
Similarly, Yuan Weijing, the wife of imprisoned activist Chen Guangcheng, said the number of guards watching her home in the Shangdong province town of Linyi has risen from 10 to more than 40. "Because of the Olympics approaching, people like me -- nothing more than a rights defender's wife -- are being specially protected by the government," she said in a statement disseminated by Human Rights in China.
Two longtime activists were put under detention last week in what amounted to unexplained extensions of earlier terms.
Du Daobin, a dissident Internet writer, was ordered back to jail July 24 after a court revoked an earlier suspended sentence just as the probationary period was about to end. Authorities said he had violated terms of the probation by posting comments on the Internet and receiving unauthorized visitors at his Hebei province home.
Ye Guozhu, a housing rights activist in Beijing, was detained last Saturday on suspicion of disturbing public order just as he was scheduled to be released after serving an earlier jail term connected to his anti-government agitation.
Ye's brother, Ye Guoqiang, told Human Rights in China that authorities notified the family on the day of his scheduled release.
"Ye's brother said authorities refused to explain how Ye Guozhu could gather a crowd to disturb public order while in prison," the rights group reported. "Ye Guoqiang believes they intend to block possible foreign media contact with his brother and will keep him in custody at least until after the Beijing Olympic Games have ended."
