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We’ve updated the story of Chinese dissident Hu Jia and his wife Zeng Jinyan a few times over the past year, including some happy news for the couple last month, the birth of a daughter. But 2007, which saw Zeng named to TIME’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people in May, has ended on a decidedly worrisome note for the couple. Late last week police detained Hu on suspicion of “incitement to subvert state power.” (The detention was detailed by the South China Morning Post, Radio Free Asia, the New York Times and Reuters.)
What specifically drove authorities to take Hu into custody remains unclear, though they can’t be pleased that a 41-day detention of Hu in 2006 and subsequent house arrest has done little to silence him. He has become a one-man news agency on the status of political and legal activists on the mainland, firing off regular emails about corruption cases, protests and arrests. In my in-box I count 19 mass emails from Hu in December alone, including one apparently sent hours before he was brought in on Dec. 27. The RFA report says Hu was chatting online with a fellow activist when the police came to apprehend him.
When a colleague and I visited Hu and Zeng this summer at their home in the Beijing suburbs they were hosting Yuan Weijing, wife of blind activist Chen Guangcheng, and her young daughter. At that time Hu mentioned that an officer warned him there would be “a settling of accounts” after the 2008 Olympics finished and the world’s attention was no longer focused on China. That settling of accounts may be coming early.