Reuters AlertNet Lite - Blind activist's wife forced home by officials

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Blind activist's wife forced home by officials

25 Aug 2007 10:20:25 GMT
Source: Reuters

BEIJING, Aug 25 (Reuters) - The wife of a blind, jailed Chinese activist was smuggled home from Beijing by local officials, who also hit her and pulled her hair, after she tried to leave the country to collect an award on her husband's behalf.

Yuan Weijing knew the men who bundled her into a car at the airport and drove her back to coastal Shandong province after police said her passport was invalid, although she had been allowed to check-in, her brother-in-law told Reuters by phone.

Her husband Chen Guangcheng was one of seven winners of the Manila-based Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation this year.

The foundation cited his "irrepressible passion for justice in leading ordinary Chinese citizens to assert their legitimate rights under the law".

Chen was jailed for four years and three months last year for disrupting traffic and damaging property, charges his wife and critics say were concocted by officials angry at his exposure of forced late-term abortions in his hometown in Shandong province.

Yuan arrived home around nine in the evening but refused to get out of the car without her luggage and an explanation of why she had been illegally detained, her brother-in-law said.

The men who had brought her then pulled her hair, pushed her from the car, hit and kicked her, he added.

Her belongings were eventually returned in the early hours of the morning, after she filed a complaint with local police about the detention, assault and missing possessions.

On Friday, police had also accosted and briefly detained a small group of foreign reporters who had gone to the house in Beijing where Yuan was staying before her flight.

Foreign journalists were supposed to have been given greater freedom to report since the start of the year, ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But in practice the police still detain reporters when they see fit.

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Last updated:Sat Aug 25 10:21:17 2007