BEIJING — China’s crackdown on religious freedom advocates ahead of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games extended to two Christian human rights attorneys during two September weekends. Attorney Li Heping released a statement saying a group of men ordered him to stop practicing law, beat him and struck him with electric batons for nearly five hours Sept. 29. Li said the men covered his head with a cloth bag and took him to a basement in a Beijing suburb. “There, several people took turns to beat me brutally, slap my face, hit me on the head with water bottles and kick me,” he said. “The most unbearable form of their torture was hitting me with high-voltage electric batons.”
The previous Saturday — Sept. 22 — Christian human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng and his family were reportedly arrested a day after he sent an open letter to the U.S. Congress listing human rights abuses. Gao has been under house arrest since his December 2006 conviction for “inciting subversion,” serving a sentence of three years with five years probation for his human rights defense work.
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