Death of an Activist (Updated)

From the Guardian:

One of China’s leading democracy activists has been beaten, possibly to death, in front of a Guardian journalist. Lu Banglie was last seen lying unconscious on the side of the road on Saturday night after an assault by a mob which had joined forces with police to stop a car containing him, the Guardian’s Shanghai correspondent, Benjamin Joffe-Walt, and two other people.

They were on their way to Taishi, a village in the southern province of Guangdong which has become the latest flashpoint in a growing wave of rural unrest that is proving the greatest threat to the rule of the Communist party since the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

Mr Lu, one of a new breed of peasant leaders elected without the support of the party, had been in the area on the outskirts of Guangzhou city since August, encouraging residents to vote out officials accused of corruption.

With Taishi seen as a symbol of the movement for peasant rights, this was an increasingly dangerous activity. Several academics, lawyers and human rights campaigners have been arrested by police and threatened by a mob that villagers say has been hired to keep visitors away. Several journalists who have entered the area have been detained or beaten, most recently last Friday, when correspondents for Radio France and the South China Morning Post were assaulted.

Here’s Benjamin Joffe-Walt’s account:

The last time I saw Lu Banglie, he was lying in a ditch on the side of the street – placid, numb and lifeless – the spit, snot and urine of about 20 men mixing with his blood, and running all over his body.

I had only met him that day. He was to show me the way to Taishi, the hotspot of the growing rural uprisings in China. It felt like heading into a war. Taishi is under siege, I was warned. The day I arrived a French radio journalist and a Hong Kong print journalist were rumoured to have been beaten somewhere around Taishi.

(via RConversation)

Update: The activist is not dead after all, which throws some doubt on the reliability of Guardian journalist Benjamin Joffe-Walt. RConversation has further links on this affair, including some far-from-complimentary comment from a Chinese blogger.