The 'Super Vulgar Butcher' caught in China's crackdown on rights activists

Bearded, bald and burly ex-soldier Wu Gan calls himself The Super Vulgar Butcher. He poses for online portraits brandishing knives in both hands that he says he'll use to "slaughter the pigs" among local officials who've done wrong.

Since 2009, he championed a confrontational approach to compel police, local officials or the courts to address alleged unfairness on the mainland. He travelled to remote communities to shame local authorities into doing the right thing.

His stunts included putting the likeness of a local official's face on a naked mannequin and threatening to hold a funeral service for a top judge. When authorities held a fellow activist at a hotel, Wu had an open invitation for like-minded people to visit the detainee, prompting his release by jittery officials wary of a crowd.

"I don't want to see policies being dictated by hooligans who will do harm to the nation. And so we go out there to help people, with the simple hope that our action will make this country a better place to live," he said in a 2012 video he made for supporters in case he should ever disappear or be arrested.

That day has come. Wu was formally arrested this month, as part of a recent crackdown on a loosely allied group of more than 200 "rights-defender lawyers" and the activists associated with them. He is among dozens who remain detained and may eventually stand trial.

They are the latest group targeted by the government under President Xi Jinping as it dismantles - one by one - any group with the potential to gain enough influence to threaten the Communist Party's monopoly on power. The party also has launched campaigns since 2013 to hush influential online bloggers, and to lock up members of the New Citizen movement that had openly called for greater government accountability.