Activist's Wife Prevented From Leaving China to Accept Award

The wife of a jailed Chinese activist was prevented from leaving the country today as she attempted to travel overseas to collect a human rights award on behalf of her husband. Yuan Weijing was detained at Beijing airport, her passport revoked and her mobile phone confiscated, according to friends.

They fear she will be sent back to her village in Shandong province, less than two months after she escaped from house arrest and round-the-clock surveillance by local police.

The former English teacher was attempting to fly to the Philippines to pick up a Magsaysay award - sometimes referred to as Asia's Nobel prize - on behalf of her husband, the blind peasant activist Chen Guangcheng.

Mr Chen was one of seven winners this year. The award foundation cited his "irrepressible passion for justice in leading ordinary Chinese citizens to assert their legitimate rights under the law".

Last August, Mr Chen was sentenced to four years in prison, ostensibly for disrupting traffic and damaging property. The conviction came after he was abducted by police from the streets of Beijing and placed under house arrest because he tried to expose a program of forced late-term abortions in Lingyi city, Shandong province.

His wife was aware that she would probably not be allowed to leave. The previous night she received a call from Shandong officials telling her that her passport was invalid under a statute that blocked overseas travel for those deemed likely to harm the nation's interests.

"She was sad, worried and angry last night. She told us she could not fall asleep," said Hu Jia, a civic activist who has also been under house arrest for much of the last year.

Foreign journalists who went to report on Ms Yuan's departure from Mr Hu's house were briefly detained by police. A British diplomat who visited the airport to see if Ms Yuan would be allowed to leave told the Reuters news agency that she was concerned about harassment.

"This is a case we've raised at the highest levels with the Chinese," Lucy Hughes told the agency. "We are concerned both for the safety of human rights defenders and for the ability of journalists to report freely."

It is not the first time that China has prevented its nationals from collecting Magsaysay awards. In the past five years, the authorities also blocked the army doctor Jiang Yanyong, who revealed the true scale of the 2003 Sars outbreak, and Gao Yaojie, the doctor who helped to expose the HIV-blood contamination scandal in Henan province.