Too busy to blog much right now, but here's a useful profile of He Peirong - Pearl He - the activist who met Chen Guangcheng after he went over the wall and drove him to Beijing and the loose campaigning network to which she belongs. She's vanished, believed in detention, from Friday.
There's a campaign underway for her release, but it doesn't seem to have broken beyond the disapora Sinosphere. Two others involved in Chen's escape, Hu Jia and Guo Yushan, were also detained. Hu, who met with Chen in Beijing, was released after 24 hours. As of now, nothing has been heard from Guo.
Under recent changes in Chinese law, people can be disappeared for six months before their whereabouts need to be revealed by the cops. This clearly hasn't happened with Hu Jia, though since he's only recently out of prison from the last time he tangled with the authorities, perhaps he's not considered central to any case the public security might want to bring.
Chen's family remains in detention by the Linyi cops. His nephew, who fought off an attack by local goons on the family compound with a couple of kitchen knives, is still believed to be on the run.
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