Outspoken mainland poet Wang Zang was arrested on suspicion of "inciting subversion of state power" last Saturday, five days ahead of the 31st anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Wang's wife Li told Radio Free Asia that the police took her and her husband from their home in the city of Chuxiong, Yunnan, along with all of their important legal and financial documents such as their debit cards, identity cards and passports.
She said the police released her without pressing charges the next day, but she was still under police surveillance. The whereabouts of her husband remains unknown.
The accusation against Wang is unclear. In September 2014, Wang tweeted a picture of himself holding an umbrella in front of a Taiwanese flag. He held up his middle finger apparently showing support for Hong Kong's pro-democracy Umbrella Movement, which had then just begun.
Wang was released after nine months of detention. His lawyer said in a Radio Free Asia report that he suffered a heart attack during that time. Wang had never been diagnosed with heart disease until his detention, he said, adding that Wang was deprived of sleep and forced to remain standing for four nights in a row.
Following his release, Wang was put under police surveillance and, in 2018, he was made to leave Beijing and move to the southwestern province of Yunnan where he is from.
The Chinese government has a history of harassing and ramping up surveillance of dissidents ahead of the anniversary of the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. It is estimated that the People's Liberation Army killed at least hundreds of peaceful protesters, many of them university students.