BEIJING // A campaign against Chinese human rights activists was described yesterday as the most severe in more than a decade, as more foreign governments called for dissidents seized by the authorities to be freed.
The European Union yesterday said it was "concerned" by China's "increasing use of arbitrary detention", echoing comments from the United States and United Kingdom after weeks of tension sparked by calls for "jasmine revolution" pro-democracy protests. The French and German governments have also expressed concern.
"We call on the Chinese authorities to refrain from using arbitrary detention under any circumstances," the EU delegation in China said in a statement yesterday.
Governments and campaigners have cited the case of Ai Weiwei, a prominent Chinese artist and critic of one-party rule taken into custody on Sunday as he tried to board a flight to Hong Kong.
An online petition calling for the release of Mr Ai, 53, had yesterday attracted more than 1,500 signatures. Family and friends have been unable to contact him or determine his whereabouts, and several of his assistants and his wife, Lu Qing, were taken in for questioning.
"This time it's extremely serious," Ms Lu told Reuters. "They searched his studio and took discs and hard drives and all kinds of stuff, but the police haven't told us where he is or what they're after. There's no information about him."
He is one of dozens seized since February, when a foreign website posted times and locations for street protests in Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities.
The pressure group Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) said yesterday that while the whereabouts of some under detention was known, a dozen people had disappeared and it was not known where they were being held. In such "extra-judicial detentions" activists have been held without being formally arrested in what has been described as a legal limbo. Others have been placed under surveillance or house arrest.
Li Xinai, the wife of Gu Chuan, an activist taken by police in mid-February, is said by CHRD to have gone to a Beijing police station on Sunday with her five-month-old baby to begin a hunger strike in protest at her husband's disappearance. Another activist, Hua Chunhui, is reported by CHRD to have been sent to a labour camp.
Mark Toner, a US State Department spokesman, said this week officials were "deeply concerned" about arrests, detentions and convictions of activists for "exercising their internationally recognised human right for freedom of expression".
Wang Songlian, CHRD research co-ordinator, said the detentions represent "a very serious situation". She described it as the biggest crackdown on activists since 1998, when campaigners said at least 100 activists were detained or arrested and several sent to labour camps.
"I think the government is very nervous because it knows that underneath the prosperity in China there is a lot of simmering discontent [because of], for example, forced evictions. This discontent has been bubbling," she said.
"The government knows no matter how much control they have, it's an unstable situation. Before [the wave of protests] in the Middle East, no one predicted it would happen."
The authorities were, she said, using the crackdown as an opportunity to stifle the growth of civil society.
"The government looks at what happened in the Middle East, and they realise they must crack down on civil society or it will be too late," she added.
Amnesty International said this week the latest spate of arrests was of particular concern, as there was no indication of when the authorities would relax controls.
While the authorities have reacted forcefully to calls for protests, no demonstrations have actually taken place, with a heavy police presence at the sites where they were planned preventing gatherings.
Events in Beijing and Shanghai grabbed headlines, however, when officials and security attacked reporters and camera crews, leading to editorials in state-controlled newspapers denouncing foreign journalists.
In comments made last month, Wu Bangguo, the second-highest ranked official in China after the president and party chairman, Hu Jintao, reiterated the communist party's opposition to a multi-party political system, warning that this could see the country "sink into the abyss of internal disorder".
The premier, Wen Jiabao, has talked of introducing democratic reforms, but his comments are thought to relate to intra-party democracy, rather than allowing genuine opposition parties.
