Agence France Presse

Beijing, February 1:

A leading Shanghai-based campaigner for residents’ rights was severely beaten and detained after trying to pay his respects to deposed leader Zhao Ziyang, his wife and a human rights group said today.

Xu Zhengqing was among 22 people who left Shanghai for Beijing to attend the funeral of Zhao, whose cremation took place in a government-controlled ceremony on Saturday.

But as they set off for the memorial in western Beijing, they were surrounded by dozens of police officers who bundled them into vans and took them to a Public Security Bureau dispatch station, Human Rights in China said.

They were searched and police confiscated photos of Zhao. Police then took them to the train station. At that time, Xu said: “What is the crime in mourning Zhao Ziyang?”, the rights group said. In response, he was badly beaten, including by an official identified as the security

section chief at the public security bureau near Zhongnanhai, the secretive compound where China’s leaders live in the heart of Beijing. “Police beat him severely... His eyes are completely swollen... He was arrested,” his wife Tao Yu told AFP. “He has difficulty moving

after he was kicked in his private parts.” The bureau refused to comment. Xu, one of hundreds of Shanghai residents displaced by a major redevelopment project and who has for some time been petitioning for residents rights, is still being held although the 21 others have been released. “Police are unlikely to let him go because they have charged him (with suspicion of creating a disturbance in a public place) and are likely to put him in jail,” said Tao. China prevented many dissidents from mourning Zhao, fearing his death and

funeral would be a rallying point for those dissatisfied with the government.

At least a dozen activists who planned to commemorate the death were detained or placed under house arrest, sources and human rights groups said.