China human rights lawyer missing, thought detained: rights group News
China human rights lawyer missing, thought detained: rights group

[JURIST] Chinese rights activist Teng Biao has disappeared and is thought to have been detained by state authorities, rights group China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group [advocacy website] said Friday. Teng, a lawyer with close ties to civil rights activist Hu Jia [Radio Free Asia profile], did not return home Thursday evening, and neighbors witnessed an unidentified man being dragged into a car. In September 2007, Teng and Hu wrote an open letter [text] requesting that the international community investigate China's promises to improve its human rights record. China has been criticized in recent months for cracking down on human rights activists and political dissidents [JURIST report] ahead of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. AP has more. Reuters has additional coverage.

Hu was formally arrested and charged with inciting subversion of state power [JURIST report] last month. Last year, Hu made public [JURIST report] letters and recordings from Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng alleging that Gao was tortured into confessing to subversion charges. In November 2007, rights group Dui Hua reported that the number of political arrests in China more than doubled in 2006 [JURIST report].

THIS DAY @ LAW

Ku Klux Klan founded

The US hate group known as the Ku Klux Klan was founded on December 24, 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee as a reaction to reconstruction efforts following the Union victory in the American Civil War. The group would later become notorious for its attacks on Black Americans, being targeted by the Enforcement Act of 1871, which imposed civil and criminal liability for deprivation of constitutional rights. Read the Enforcement Act of 1871.  

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On December 24, 1957, Hamid Karzai was born in Karz, Afghanistan. He would go on to become in 2004 his country's first elected president after the end of Taliban rule in 2001.