Writer and environmentalist, Mr. Tan Zuoren, was arrested by Chinese police for searching and compiling a list of names of students who died in the Sichuan earthquake. (VOA)
Analysts believe Mr. Tan's arrest related to his private investigation of student deaths during the devastating Sichuan earthquake on May 12, 2008.
According to the Chinese Human Rights Defenders website, the police also took away Mr. Tan's CDs, drafts, and some documents, later taking photos of the searched house after carrying Mr. Tan away.
Mr. Tan had published many articles related to the earthquake. This year, he again posted a “5.12 Students File” on the Internet. He had started his own independent investigation and hoped to finish by the anniversary of the earthquake.
VOA interviewed Mr. Tan's wife, Ms Wang Qinghua, on April 1. She said that Mr. Tan was taken away when she was at work, but their 15 year old daughter witnessed the whole process.
Ms Wang said, “Later, the local police personally delivered a notice to my home, and asked me to sign the detention notification document. It said Tan was arrested for suspected involvement in instigating the overthrow of state power, and was thus detained in Wenjiang Detention Center.”
VOA interviewed Mr. Tan on March 23, just a few days before his arrest. Mr. Tan said he was working on the student death toll.
During the interview, Mr. Tan disclosed that he had a list of over 2,000 names after visiting the parents of those students. Mr. Tan criticized the regime’s irresponsible actions after the earthquake. It either did not investigate the disaster and count the student death toll, or refused to publicly release a figure.
Another mainland Internet writer and commentator, Ran Yunfei, believes Mr. Tan's arrest is related to his investigation, “He wrote the 5.12 proposal, appealing to the public to count the student death toll, to get more accurate data. But according to Mr. Tan, national security found out about his proposal, and the public awareness the proposal was creating. All these could make the regime uneasy.”
Law Professor Wang Yi from Chengdu University said that Mr. Tan was very keen in public welfare activities, claiming he was involved in the environmental protection project “Green Rivers.” Mr. Tan recently became increasingly more and more involved in civil rights protection activities.
Wang said, since the earthquake, Mr. Tan would often go to disaster areas to investigate student deaths. Wang said he could not understand how Mr. Tan’s activities could be linked with instigating the overthrow of state power.
According to the regime's Press Office of the State Council, on September 25, 2008, the confirmed death toll in the Sichuan earthquake was 69,227. But, to date, the regime has never released any student death toll.
Edited by Epoch Times
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