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Agence France-Presse
BEIJING - Prominent Chinese rights lawyer Teng Biao was released Saturday after unidentified police kidnapped him two days ago from outside his Beijing home, he said.
"I was taken away on Thursday night. They shoved me into a car and put a bag over my head," Teng said.
"They didn't show me any identification, but they said that they were from the Beijing Public Security Bureau."
Chinese activists and international rights groups Saturday condemned Teng's kidnapping as "shocking," as fears rose of a crackdown on dissent ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
Police told him he had been detained for articles he had written on protecting the rights of citizens, including an open letter to the government penned with fellow activist Hu Jia, who is currently awaiting trial for subversion, he said.
"They told me not to talk to foreign journalists," Teng said.
"I can't tell you exactly what they said. They told me that I shouldn't speak. There is a lot of pressure on me. There is no law that gives them the right to silence me, it is only their threats."
Teng, 34, said that he fears for his personal safety and that of his wife and two-year-old child. He added that he was not harmed while in custody and was given food during his detention.
Teng is a lawyer at the Beijing Huayi Law Firm and has lectured at the China University of Political Science and Law. In 2007 he received the French Presidential Award for Human Rights.
He has also been a close associate of Hu Jia, a prominent human rights campaigner who was arrested in December.
Rights groups immediately welcomed his release, but expressed grave concerns over police methods.
"China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group welcomes the release of Teng Biao," the Hong Kong-based group said in a statement.
"But we are still concerned about the way the Beijing public security officers took him away. Beijing is going to host the Olympic Games in a few months, and we hope that such an incident would not happen again."
Chinese security forces are known to swoop and detain government critics in unmarked black vehicles.
"We are extremely relieved that Teng Biao is released and apparently unharmed, but we are extremely concerned that elements of Beijing's Public Security Bureau were responsible for his abduction," said Phelim Kine of New York-based Human Rights Watch.
"This kind of thuggery against a high-profile legal rights defender is absolutely unacceptable exactly five months ahead of the official start of the 2008 Beijing Olympics."
Xu Zhiyong, another rights lawyer and colleague of Teng's said: "Kidnappings in Beijing like this are very rare. We believe this kind of crime cannot be accepted.
"We demand that the police authorities immediately investigate and solve this case and firmly punish the perpetrators," he told AFP.
Other rights lawyers have been allegedly harassed by police in recent days, including Li Heping, whose car was rammed on Friday by a group of unidentified men who had been following him since Hu Jia's arrest, Li told AFP.
The incidents come after rights lawyers and legal advisers such as Chen Guangcheng, Gao Zhisheng and Yang Maodong were arrested, jailed or placed under house arrest for activities aimed at protecting the rights of ordinary citizens.
"At a minimum, lawyers must be able to function independently without fear for their own or their family's safety," Sharon Hom, director of the New York-based Human Rights in China, said in a statement.
"The ongoing assault, intimidation, harassment, and politicized prosecution of rights defenders raise serious questions about the implementation of protective provisions in ."