Chinese authorities detained the founder of Southern Street Movement, which calls for an end to one-party rule, amid increasingly intense efforts to suppress commemorations of next week's 25th anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, The Associated Press reported.
SSM founder Wang Aizhong was detained in the southern city of Guangzhou on suspicion of picking quarrels and provoking troubles, according to his lawyers Zhang Xuezhong and Wu Kuiming, the AP reported.
Wang is at least the 20th person detained ahead of the anniversary of the June 4, 1989, military attack on protesters, according to Amnesty International, while others have been put under house arrest or reported as missing, according to the AP.
Calls to the Guangzhou police were either unanswered or the people who answered hung up after learning it was from a media organization, the AP reported.
Communist leaders detain and harass activists every year ahead of June 4 but this year's efforts to suppress China's small number of active dissidents are unusually severe, according to the AP. In Beijing, human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang and four others were detained after they attended a private forum to commemorate the 1989 protest and its crackdown.
"In the past, these activists got no more than warnings, but formal detentions show the political climate has grown tenser," said Zhang, the AP reported. "There are no grounds to persecute those who should discuss in private a historic event that did happen in our country's history."
Participants in Wang's movement have protested in the street, holding up signs and banners to declare their demands, according to the AP. Several of them also have been detained ahead of the anniversary.
Most of those detained have been charged with picking quarrels and provoking troubles, a charge critics say is used to disguise political persecution, the AP reported. The human rights group Amnesty International has criticized Beijing for this year's persecution of activists and said it is contrary to President Xi Jinping's promise of openness.
