RELATIVES AND friends of the blind, barefoot lawyer Chen Guangcheng were rounded up by the authorities yesterday in light of his audacious escape last week.
After months of planning by his allies, Mr Chen scaled the wall built around his home in Shandong province by local authorities, and was driven hundreds of kilometres to Beijing, where he stayed in safe houses before making his way to the US embassy.
His wife and six-year-old daughter remain under house arrest and several family members have been detained and others are being sought.
The case has ratcheted up political tensions in the capital. Tensions in Beijing were already running high as the government sought to contain discussion about the purging of Chongqing’s Communist Party chief, Bo Xilai, and the daring flight comes ahead of next week’s visit by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who has demanded Mr Chen’s release in the past.
Zeng Jinyan, the wife of one of Mr Chen’s fellow activists, said yesterday that she had not heard from Hu Jia after he was taken away by police on Saturday evening.
Another friend of Mr Chen, He Peirong, was detained in Nanjing. She had blogged that she had driven Mr Chen to Beijing. She could not be reached yesterday.
Dissident artist Ai Weiwei said: “It’s terrible what happened to him and the people who want to control must learn not to do this.”
Mr Chen, who compiled reports about forced abortions and sterlisations in Shandong province, was jailed for four years in 2006 on trumped-up traffic charges, then placed under house arrest on his release in 2010.
