SIDEBAR: Police hold rights lawyer to prevent dinner with Merkel

Feb 3, 2012, 10:04 GMT

Beijing - Chinese police held a leading human rights lawyer at his office to prevent him from attending a scheduled dinner with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the lawyer said Friday.

Mo Shaoping said State Security officers went to his office Thursday afternoon and held him there until the evening.

'I told them, 'You don't have any legal right to do this,'' Mo told dpa. 'They said it was for 'stability.''

'We don't want different voices,' Mo quoted the police as saying, apparently referring to the ruling Communist Party's desire to suppress opposition before a party congress expected in November that would approve the first leadership change in a decade.

'I told them, 'I'm just a simple lawyer. If I go, what does it have to do with stability?''

When he challenged their grounds for preventing him from meeting Merkel, Mo said the police told him: 'The leaders said you can't go.'

German government sources confirmed that Mo was invited to a dinner with Merkel Thursday in Beijing. He did not attend, the sources said.

Mo said a second person invited to the dinner, Wu Si, did attend. Wu edits the influential magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu, which focusses on contemporary history but sometimes writes about political issues.

Merkel left Beijing Friday for the southern city of Guangzhou after meeting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao, who also leads the Communist Party.

'Germany has always advocated an open political dialogue, including on controversial issues such as human rights and building a state of law,' Merkel said in a speech to Chinese officials and scholars Thursday.

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