Activist Wang Aizhong detained before 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square crackdown

Authorities detained another activist amid increasingly intense efforts to suppress commemorations of next week’s 25th anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, his lawyers said Friday.

Wang Aizhong, a founder of the Southern Street Movement, which calls for an end to one-party rule, was detained in Guangzhou on suspicion of picking quarrels and provoking troubles, according to his lawyers Zhang Xuezhong and Wu Kuiming.

Wang is at least the 20th person detained ahead of the anniversary of the June 4, 1989, crackdown on protesters, according to human rights group Amnesty International. Others have been put under house arrest or reported as missing.

Calls to the Guangzhou authorities were either unanswered or the people who answered hung up after the caller identified herself as a reporter.

Communist leaders detain and harass activists every year ahead of June 4 but this year’s efforts to suppress China’s small number of active dissidents are unusually severe.

In Beijing, human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang and four others were detained after they attended a private forum to commemorate the 1989 protest and its crackdown.