Burma detains Chinese dissident's son

Police in Burma have arrested the 16-year-old son of jailed Chinese dissident Bao Longjun, apparently at the request of Chinese authorities at a nearby border checkpoint.

Sources within the dissident community said plainclothes Burmese police physically seized 16-year-old Bao Zhuoxuan at a guesthouse in a town near the Chinese frontier. Zhou Fengsuo, who said he was a family friend of the Baos, said the teenager was trying to escape to the Burmese city of Rangoon to seek asylum from the United States.

He said it appeared the Burmese authorities were holding Bao Zhuoxuan for Chinese security agents. Burma prefers to be known as Myanmar.

"The (Beijing) government is using him as a hostage. Chinese are kidnapping their own citizen, and the only reason is to use him against his parents, which is just so shameful." Zhao lives in San Francisco, and was planning to take the teenager back to the United States with him.

The younger Bao crossed the border secretly last week after Chinese took away his passport.

His father Bao Longjun has been held in prison since early this year after authorities conducted raids on what they said were a dozen members of a criminal gang, a common description of Chinese dissidents.

The teenager's mother, Wang Yu, a human rights lawyer, was arrested in July for "subverting state power." She is one of 20 Chinese women detained during the past year for alleged offences against the state. The United States began a campaign last September 1 to raise public awareness and to protest the arrests. It is known from its hashtag #FreeThe20.