A human rights group in China has reported that a Chinese environmental activist was brutally beaten up after giving an interview to German public broadcaster ARD. According to the group Human Rights in China, Fu Xiancai, a farmer and environmental activist gave an interview to German television on May 19 about construction work on the Three Gorges Dam, in which he commented on Beijing’s failure to compensate 1.3m people forced to relocate after the project began in 1997.
Three weeks later, he was visited by police in the Zigui region in Hubei province and questioned about his statements to German television. On his way home, he was attacked by unknown assailants. Since then, he has been under 24-hour police observation in hospital and is believed to be paralysed from the neck down.
This was not the first time Fu had felt the wrath of the authorities. In April 2005 he was beaten up after talking to a US newspaper, and one month later his son received a murder threat