MCLC: activist Liu Ping missing

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: activist Liu Ping missing
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Source: NYT 
(3/19/12):http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/world/asia/chinese-activist-is-
missing-rights-group-says.html

Activist Said to Be Missing in China
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

BEIJING ‹ Liu Ping 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/world/asia/chinese-womens-progress-stall
s-in-varied-standards.html>, a rights activist who has angered officials
in China with her advocacy of free elections and support of labor and
women¹s rights issues, has been missing since early this month after she
was detained in Beijing by security personnel from her hometown, according
to an advocacy group.

Wang Songlian, a researcher at Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said Monday
that Ms. Liu¹s disappearance was most likely part of a wave of detentions
tied to the meetings of China¹s handpicked legislature, the National
People¹s Congress, and an advisory body, the Chinese People¹s Political
Consultative Conference. The meetings typically lead to detentions of
people whom the authorities consider troublesome, in an attempt to stop
those people from petitioning the government, the group said. The meetings
ended last week.

Although the crackdown is an annual event, ³in general the feeling is that
this year is more serious than previous years,² with China facing its
biggest leadership transition in a decade later this year, Ms. Wang said.

Ms. Liu, 47, who is from the city of Xinyu in the southern province of
Jiangxi, sent two text messages to Chinese Human Rights Defenders on March
6, saying that she had been intercepted at a Beijing train station by a
group of people working for her former employer, the state-owned Xinyu
Iron and Steel Company, Ms. Wang said. Ms. Liu¹s cellphone has been off
since then, Ms. Wang said.
³I didn¹t come to Beijing to petition, I came to find work!² one of the
messages read, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders. ³They are
ruthless, they are shutting me down economically! I have to put my
daughter through university!²

Ms. Liu has petitioned the government in the past and she has been
detained before, she said in interviews last month.

She campaigned last year as an independent candidate for a seat on Xinyu¹s
local congress but did not win. Her high-profile campaign helped inspire
other independent candidacies around China, nearly all of which failed.

A man who answered the telephone Monday at Xinyu Steel¹s Beijing offices,
when asked about Ms. Liu¹s disappearance, said there was ³no such thing.²
Pressed, he said a caller had dialed the wrong number and hung up. People
who answered the phones at the Xinyu Public Security Bureau and the city¹s
detention center said they could not help with inquiries into Ms. Liu¹s
whereabouts.