Three well-known relatives of victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown have been detained in China before the 15th anniversary of the pro-democracy protests.
Ms Ding Zilin, 67, a Beijing-based leader of the "Tiananmen Mothers" campaign, was taken into custody by plainclothes agents while visiting her ancestral home of southern Wuxi on Sunday, Ding's husband, Jiang Peikun (70), told journalists. Their sons were also killed in the square.
Zhang Xianling and Huang Jinping, also members of the campaign that has lobbied the government to reassess the crackdown on what Beijing condemned as a counter-revolutionary uprising, were detained in Beijing the same morning, said Jiang.
The Tiananmen Mothers have repeatedly called for the government to take responsibility for the killings.
"I suspect this is because the 15th anniversary of June 4 is coming soon," said Jiang, whose 17-year-old son was one of hundreds killed as army tanks shot their way through Beijing on June 3rd to 4th. "They fear people might make demands regarding June 4, so it's an alert."
The arrests came two weeks before the anniversary of the death of former Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang on April 15th, 1989, which sparked nearly two months of student-led protests centred on Tiananmen Square.
New York-based Human Rights in China said police told Mrs Zhang's husband that the Tiananmen Mothers were a "reactionary" group through which "entities inside and outside of China were conspiring to harm national security and incite subversion of state power".