Chinese independent filmmaker Du Bin arrested for ‘picking quarrels online’
Beijing-based independent filmmaker Du Bin has been in custody since Wednesday for picking quarrels and provoking trouble on social media, while another human rights activist was put under house arrest after copies of Apple Daily were found in his car.
Police told the younger sister of the 48-year-old former New York Times photographer that he had been arrested on the charge that carries up to five years in prison. He is being held in the Daxing District Detention Center in Beijing, she said.
It was unclear whether Du is being held in criminal or administrative detention: In the former, suspects are remanded until being taken to court; in the latter, their personal freedom is restricted for up to 15 days.
Mainland authorities have reportedly questioned Du several times this year and demanded that he delete tweets. According to his sister, Du stopped using Twitter.
Du has focused on historical research in recent years and published a book in 2017 on the military blockade of the northeastern city of Changchun by Communist Party forces in 1948, in which hundreds of thousands of people perished.
Du is also reportedly working on a book that critiques the ideals of Vladimir Lenin. The book is due out next month. It is unclear whether the arrest is related to his publications.
This is not the first time Du has been detained. In 2013, he disappeared days before the anniversary of the Tiananmen square crackdown on June 4. It was later found that he had been held detained for five weeks by state security officials. At that time he had been planning to launch a book on the 1989 protest movement.
Meanwhile, activist Ou Biaofeng has been under house arrest on suspicion of subverting state power, a crime punishable by life imprisonment, according to Chinese civil rights group New Citizens’ Movement.
Ou had been detained for 15 days and was supposed to have been released on Saturday. But his home in Hunan province was raided by public security officers on Friday. They seized Ou’s cell phone, computer and other personal belongings and told his wife Wei Huanhuan that Ou had been put under house arrest.
The officers reportedly found four copies of Apple Daily in Ou’s car. They were reportedly dated between Aug. 11 and 14 and related to the arrest of the paper’s founder Jimmy Lai on Aug. 10.
Sources close to Ou said that those four copies of Apple Daily would likely become part of the evidence for his conviction.
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