From Houston Chronical:
Cai Aimin says he was busily handing out homemade leaflets on the streets, campaigning for a seat in his city’s legislature, when police officers swooped in and dragged him into an unmarked car. The platform outlined in his handbills called for exposing corrupt officials and protecting citizens from seizures of their property. The police, he said, did not agree.
“They kept me in a hotel for three days and detained me for another 15 days after that,” Cai, 35, said in a telephone interview from Zhengzhou, the city where he sought election. “But I’m not afraid of them. What they have done is totally wrong.”
In the midst of an election season for local congresses, a tug-of-war is under way across China between social activists demanding a say in local politics and a communist leadership determined to maintain strict limits on the low-level democracy it has promoted for some years.[Full Text]
