A former security guard at Peking University has been taken away by mainland police for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party in videos he shared online, according to his lawyer.

Zhang Pancheng called his lawyer Liang Xiaojun on Sunday afternoon saying that he had been detained over the videos, Liang told Apple Daily on Monday.

The former guard’s whereabouts were not immediately clear, but according to dissident Hua Yong, who followed Zhang’s Twitter posts, Zhang last week said he was in his native Gansu province.

Yong said he received Zhang’s last message last Thursday, a day after the former guard said he was leaving home on bicycle.

In his videos posted on Twitter last week, Zhang called for mainland authorities to release citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who was sentenced in January to four years in jail for seeking quarrels and provoking trouble — a catch-all offense that has become a byword for China’s suppression of dissidents.

Zhang Zhan had filmed in hospital and on the streets of Wuhan last February when the central mainland city was locked down as the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.

“The tyrant uses his swords, knives and batons in judging us because he fears freedom spreads like wildfire,” Zhang Pancheng said in one recent video. “He fears that once we are free, his throne will be shaken and he will be doomed.”

Zhang was released from a prison in May last year after receiving a one-year sentence, also on a charge of seeking quarrels and provoking troubles, stemming from his previous videos. In the 2018 clips, he voiced his opposition to the Communist Party’s dictatorship and called for free speech in China.

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