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Updated Thursday, December 11, 2008 9:34 am TWN, By Marianne Barriaux, AFP



	A Chinese protester wrestles with police as she tries to retrieve letters detailing her complaints, and asks for justice outside of the Foreign Ministry, Beijing, China, Wednesday, Dec. 10. Two dozen people held a bold protest using the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights to decry a myriad of alleged government abuses. (AP) Enlarge Photo

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Human Rights Day in China marred by arrests

BEIJING -- Wu Zhongbao was in Beijing on Wednesday to petition authorities for the truth behind his mother’s death, as the world commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Wu claimed the elderly woman was beaten to death by police when their home in the eastern province of Jiangsu was forcefully demolished in April 2007 — a charge denied by authorities there who say she died of a heart attack.

“I came here because I want to have justice for my family,” the 53-year-old mechanic told AFP.

Wu’s plight came as China marked Human Rights Day on Wednesday with the arrests of several dissidents and a local scandal that saw petitioners locked up in mental asylums.

On Monday evening, Liu Xiaobo, a leading human rights activist famous for his role in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, was taken away by police, his wife told AFP.

Liu had signed Charter 08, an open letter published online calling for democracy in China and signed by more than 300 intellectuals, dissidents and journalists, timed to coincide with Human Rights Day.

His arrest came just days after at least two other rights activists in the southwestern province of Guizhou were also detained.

Chen Xi and Shen Youlian, who were organizing a human rights symposium in the provincial capital Guiyang, were taken by police on Thursday, and another two fellow activists had “disappeared,” according to people close to them.

The four had also signed Charter 08. Charter 08 is similar to Charter 77, a document signed by leading dissidents in the former Czechoslovakia in 1977 criticizing the then Communist government of the Central European country.

Jiang Qisheng, another prominent pro-democracy activist who put his name to the letter, said he had been interrogated by police for an hour-and-a half on Tuesday evening about Charter 08.

And according to the New York-based activist group Human Rights in China, Zhang Zuhua, another signatory and main author of Charter 08, was questioned for 12 hours and released Tuesday morning.

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