SHANGHAI (AFP) – A human rights group has condemned Chinese police for allegedly stripping and beating a prominent Shanghai lawyer during a nine-hour detention last week.
Police summoned Zheng Enchong, who has advised residents claiming to have been forcibly evicted, on Wednesday as part of an "economic investigation", the Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group said.
Calls to the Shanghai police went unanswered and Zheng was not immediately available for comment on Tuesday.
The group's Executive Secretary Patrick Poon said Zheng's detention appeared to be linked to his work with the League of Chinese Victims, which seeks to draw attention to forced evictions in Shanghai.
"It is definitely a campaign of intimidation," Poon told AFP. "He has been warned not just once, but several times not to partake in the League of Chinese Victims and not to continue his legal rights work."
Zheng has been detained 62 times since he was released from prison in June 2006 after serving a two-year sentence, but the latest incident was the most violent, Poon said, after speaking to people close to Zheng.
Police officers slapped Zheng's face repeatedly, hit the back of his head and tried to burn his lips and eyelids with cigarettes, Poon said.
At one point, the officers pulled him up from his chair, kicked off his shoes and stripped him, leaving him standing in only his briefs, Poon said.
Officers then threw the contents of his pockets onto the floor, including money, keys, a pen and the Bible that Zheng, a devout Christian, was carrying, Poon said.
Zheng was jailed in 2004 for seeking to sue the government on behalf of evictees and has been under police surveillance since his release three years ago, Poon said.