There is a short lesson here: Trust the Cadre and you are a fool. The Chengdu earthquake is the Cadre's mask. The Cadre learns nothing, thinks nothing, remembers nothing means nothing. Five million homeless? Arrest that professor!
Leading activist detained
By Mure Dickie in Beijing
Published: May 20 2008 18:19 | Last updated: May 20 2008 18:19
Chinese police have detained the academic who last year announced the creation of a democratic opposition party after he criticised Beijing’s handling of the earthquake, according to family members and associates.
Guo Quan, a former university professor in the eastern city of Nanjing, is the latest in a series of high-profile dissidents and human rights activists to be detained or imprisoned in what some analysts see as a crackdown ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August.
Nanjing police detained Mr Guo and seized his computer, according to statements issued on an overseas dissident website in the name of the New Democracy party, whose founding he announced in December 2007.
“The police told me that he had said something online that did not accord with the truth,” Mr Guo’s wife, Li Jing, said. She said it was unclear what comments they were referring to. Nanjing police declined to comment.
Chinese authorities regularly detain online commentators and political activists seen as challenging the ruling Communist party’s power or undermining social stability.
Mr Guo has said he founded the New Democracy party to “oppose the autocratic system of one-party dictatorship” that is the “common root of all China’s social problems”.
Mr Guo had also issued a number of statements in his party's name on topics related to the earthquake that hit China's south-western Sichuan province on May 12.
In the statements, the group – whose actual membership is unclear – pledged support for the government's earthquake relief effort, but criticised the lack of forewarning of the disaster and Beijing's decision to initially decline foreign assistance with rescue work.
Mr Guo's last statement before his detention included a report credited to his party's "Nuclear Power Safety Committee" on the tremor's impact on nuclear facilities in Sichuan, home to China's main atomic weapons research and plutonium production bases.
Beijing has said that all its nuclear facilities in the area are safe and under control, but has given few details.
"It is the unanimous conclusion of party colleagues...that the authorities have carefully retaliated against acting president Guo over his recent comments regarding the Sichuan earthquake relief," a "New Democracy party" statement posted on the boxun.com website said.
A number of other activists and dissidents have been silenced in recent months, including Hu Jia, an outspoken activist on behalf of people suffering from Aids and victims of police abuse, who was jailed for three-and-a-half years for "inciting state subversion".
Mr Guo had previously said his university stripped him of his professorial status and teaching role after he issued an open letter last year calling for multi-party democracy.
China's official Xinhua news agency has said police around the country have been tracking down the sources of "earthquake-related rumours", resulting in the detention of at least four people.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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