Oct. 31, 2003 PT

BEIJING -- Chinese authorities have detained a civil servant, whose essays are banned by Beijing on the Internet, on charges of subversion, sources said on Friday, part of an intensified government crackdown on online dissent.

Plainclothes state security agents took Du Daobin, who turns 40 next month, into custody on Tuesday while he was on his way home from work in Yingcheng city in the central province of Hubei province, his wife Xia Chunrong said.

Two days later, seven plainclothesmen searched Du's home, seized his computer and presented his wife with a warrant certifying Du's detention for "subverting state power," she said.

"The state security told me he was held at Xiaogan police detention center, but when my sister went there to give him some clothes and a blanket, they denied he was there," she said.

"I'm really worried for him as well as our 12-year-old son if I'm also arrested," the 33-year-old nurse told Reuters.

Du, who works for the municipal medical reform office, signed an online petition calling for the release of fellow "cyber dissident" Liu Di, a female psychology student from Beijing Normal University who was detained in the capital in November 2002.

Du's essays are banned in China, but have been published on overseas portals, the New York-based rights group China Labour Watch said in a statement.

The London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International said 40 cyber dissidents were currently detained or imprisoned for Internet-related offences.

They include students, political dissidents and practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned by Beijing [...] in 1999. Those jailed got up to 11 years.

In addition to jailing Internet dissidents, China has created a special Internet police force, blocked some foreign sites and shut down domestic sites posting politically incorrect fare.

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,61046,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html