China Clamps Down On Environmental Monitoring Group

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China clamps down on environmental monitoring group

By David Eimer in Beijing

Published: 28 October 2005


In a sign of China's growing unease over the growing influence of environmental activists, police in Hangzhou in eastern China's Zhejiang province have arrested a local man who attempted to set up his own environmental monitoring group.

Tan Kai, who is thought to have helped informally organise an organisation called Green Watch, was detained along with five others on 19 October after opening a bank account to collect funds for the group.

China's leaders are worried about the role played by environmental activists in protests about the devastation wreaked on rivers and farmland by severe air and water pollution.

Outrage over polluting industry is now one of the major causes of rural unrest and the authorities fear a repeat of what happened in eastern Europe in the 1980s, when conservation groups were allowed to operate in relative freedom and swiftly progressed from campaigning for environmental protection to demanding wider political reform.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article322829.ece