BEIJING, SEPT 17: A Chinese democracy campaigner who publicly lobbied for political change has been detained, but police won't tell his family why or where he is being held, a human rights group reported today.Fang Jue's family does not even know how long the middle-aged government bureaucrat-turned-dissident has been in custody. His sister saw him on July 25, the last family member to do so, said the New York-based human rights group in China.When she went to file a missing-person report three weeks later, Beijing police claimed to not know his whereabouts and refused to file a report or help search for him.According to the group, on September 7, more than six weeks after his disappearance, Beijing's public security bureau notified the sister, Liu Jing, to provide Fang Jue with money.When she went to the half-step bridge detention centre in Beijing as directed, police refused to provide any information about Fang. When she angrily accused them of violating rules on family notification, policesaid,: ``For eight years, we can keep him like this. It doesn't matter.''Human rights in China speculated that the treatment given to Fang and his family suggests he may be held for a long time. It noted that prominent dissidents Wei Jingsheng, Wang Dan, and Liu Nianchun were all held in secret for periods of a year or so before their families were notified. Wang and Wei are now in exile. Never put on trial, Liu is in a Beijing labour camp, three years after his arrest.A former vice director for economic planning in southeastern Fuzhou city, Fang captured the attention of China's domestic and exiled democracy movement last winter by outlining his lobbying campaign.He called for direct elections, freedom of speech, and stronger civilian control of the military. He maintained that many mid-level and senior Communist Party officials shared his views on the need for political reform.After spending much of the 1980s in the Beijing and Fuzhou bureaucracies, Fang quit the government two years ago. He setup a trading company, which he claimed in a July interview was merely intended to fund his lobbying.In the weeks before his disappearance, he circulated another open letter calling on the Communist Party leadership to take tentative steps toward democracy. Fang wanted mayoral elections and approval for non-state newspapers in China's largest cities.
