The following is from a State Department press release, which I don't have a direct link for. I'm on several mailing lists that pump this stuff at me... The United States is concerned deeply by reports of China's alleged detention of human rights activists participating in hunger strikes over the recent beating of a Chinese human rights lawyer, says State Department spokesman Adam Ereli. "Individuals should not be detained for the peaceful expression of political views, "Ereli said during a February 27 press briefing. According to media reports, Chinese authorities detained several human rights protesters, including Beijing AIDS activist Hu Jia, over hunger strikes in support of a protest launched on February 6 by Beijing-based lawyer Gao Zhisheng in response to the beating of a human-rights activist outside a police station in Guangzhou. "The mistreatment of lawyers seeking to represent their clients undermines China's efforts to promote the rule of law," Ereli said.
The UK Guardian has some coverage: A Chinese lawyer whose hunger strike in protest of violence against dissidents galvanized other activists into a rare nationwide show of support was detained by authorities on Saturday, the lawyer and a friend said.
There is also coverage in the Washington Post: The Communist Party routinely tightens security before the annual meeting of the rubber-stamp National People's Congress, but it appears to be taking special precautions ahead of this year's session, which begins Sunday, in response to rising social unrest in the countryside and an increasingly assertive campaign by civil rights activists in several cities. The crackdown began in mid-February after a prominent Beijing lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, staged a two-day hunger strike to draw attention to the beating of a fellow human rights activist, Yang Maodong, by thugs who appeared to have been hired by police. Gao said he stopped eating to protest the government's growing use of "Mafia tactics" to suppress efforts by citizens to protect their legal rights.
Legal rights are a hard thing for a people to keep nailed down. We have been having poor results with doing it here too. Cisco, take note of this: News of Gao's hunger strike spread quickly on the Internet, and supporters in as many as 15 provinces soon agreed to take turns fasting in solidarity with him. It is unclear how many joined the relay hunger strikes, but Gao said he received phone calls and electronic messages indicating that at least 450 people had volunteered to fast for at least 24 hours.
A while back Tom Friedman wrote about how he envied the ability of China to address its problems so directly because it was an authoritarian nation. (I'd link these articles, but it would be useless because the New York Times will not let you get at them without paying. [ed: insert joke about capitalism]) I fear that too many people, like George Bush, have read those articles and only seen the half of the story that is expected when one calls something an "Op-Ed". As an antidote for Tom, I offer this from the same Washington Post article: In Shanghai, at least 15 participants in the hunger strike have disappeared or been detained, most of them residents who have been protesting the illegal demolition of their homes by real estate developers with ties to party officials, according to friends and relatives.
Tom, you disappeared from the web. In your articles (copyright infringement) you offered a prayer for forgiveness. I offer you a penance: Start a blog. Back to the topic... Property is going to be a hard issue for China to handle. To deal with property, you have to deal with individual rights. Its a very hard line to walk. Property was an issue at the core of America's civil war. So was human rights. Today, intellectual property is an issue that everyone is dealing with. China is farther behind with that than anyone, on all grounds. | 
