China: China says it has dismissed and detained officials in the eastern city of Linyi for abuses committed while enforcing the country's one-child policy.
However, the government provided no details and said nothing about the arrest of a blind activist who had campaigned against the use of forced abortion and sterilisation there.
The cabinet-level ministry responsible for managing population growth in China said in a statement that a preliminary investigation had confirmed allegations that some people in a few counties and townships of Linyi had violated the law and the rights of local residents while conducting family-planning work.
"Currently, the responsible persons have been removed from their posts," the statement said. "Some of them are being investigated for liabilities and some have been detained."
The statement did not identify the officials or their crimes, and authorities in Linyi declined to answer questions.
Jiang Tianyong, a lawyer involved in a class-action lawsuit against the Linyi officials, cast doubt on the government's statement and accused local authorities of continuing to hold Chen Guangcheng, the activist leading the lawsuit, under house arrest without due process.
Mr Jiang said the government may have disciplined a few low-level officials, but appeared to have refrained from punishing the local party leaders who ordered Mr Chen's arrest and the population-control crackdown in Linyi.
Mr Chen (34) had been collecting evidence that Linyi officials were requiring parents with two children to be sterilised and were forcing women pregnant with a third child to have abortions.
He was detained on September 6th in Beijing, taken back to Linyi and placed under house arrest. It is unclear if he has been charged with a crime, although police have threatened to prosecute him for "providing intelligence to foreign countries", apparently a reference to interviews he has given to the Washington Post, Time and other foreign media.
Local authorities have cut Mr Chen's phone service, but sympathetic villagers helped him to escape briefly last Wednesday.
In a hurried phone interview, he accused police of roughing up his wife and appealed to the central government for help. However, he noted that government investigators had not bothered to speak to him. - (LA Times-Washington Post service)