Rights lawyer Teng Biao warned not to speak to media before release

Mar 9, 2008, 10:19 GMT

Beijing - Chinese human rights lawyer Teng Biao was warned not to speak to foreign media before being released by police Saturday, the lawyer told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa Sunday.

'I am glad to be back with my family,' Teng told dpa by telephone from his Beijing apartment.

Teng said he was abducted from outside his apartment Thursday. He was blindfolded and brought to a secret location where he was kept for 40 hours and questioned about articles in which he had criticized the human rights situation in China.

He was denied all contact with his family at first, but later managed to send a text message to his wife.

He was also questioned about human rights and HIV/AIDS activist Hu Jia who was arrested in December and is now awaiting trial.

Teng Biao and Hu Jia criticized human rights violations in an essay entitled The real China and the Olympic Games 2008.

In another recent case, the activist lawyer Li Heping was hit by a police car as he brought his son to school. Li Heping and the boy were not injured, according to the rights organization Human Rights In China (HRIC).

HRIC is demanding a guarantee for the bodily protection of human rights lawyers in China.

'At a minimum, lawyers must be able to function independently without fear for their own or their family's safety,' said HRIC Executive Direction Sharon Hom Saturday.

The attacks on the lawyers show that Beijing is tightening its 'stranglehold' on activists before the Olympic Games this summer, said Tim Parritt of Amnesty International Asia and demanded an independent and thorough investigation of the incidents.