As Olympics near, China begins crackdown by arresting blogger

As the country prepares to open the 2008 Summer Olympics in three weeks, Chinese officials have arrested a writer and dissident who was already on probation after being charged a few years ago.

Du Daobin, 43, who was found guilty of charges of "incitement to subvert state power" in 2004, was scheduled to end his parole on August 4, just four days before the start of the summer games. He was initially arrested in 2003 after posting blog entries and articles talking about democracy and human rights changes the Chinese government should make in the future.

The articles accused China's leadership of being illegitimate, violent, cruel, unfair and corrupt, among other accusations.

This time around, Du reportedly left his town on numerous occassions without approval by the government, although specific details about his arrest still remain shrouded in secrecy. He also reportedly published at least 100 articles and essays on several foreign Web sites.

Du is one of China's most well known cyber dissidents, and will now likely be required to serve out the rest of his three-year sentence that was later commuted to probation.

The Chinese government was expected to begin a pre-Olympic campaign against dissent, and Du is the first person to experience the crackdown. Human rights organizations said activists have been detained and arrested to help protect Olympic security, which has caused an uproar among government critics.

Another Internet activist, Huang Qi, was arrested and charged with illegal possession of state secrets after reportedly collecting information regarding children that died in the May 12 earthquake. Huang was reportedly attempting to reveal local government corruption that led to poor engineering of the school.

China has a checkered history of arresting dissidents, journalists and bloggers who speak out against the government and its actions both domestically and internationally. Human rights organizations often butt heads with China over the arrests.

American companies Google, Microsoft and Yahoo were heavily criticized after reportedly helping the Chinese government arrest Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist who allegedly leaked state secrets onto the Internet.