Beijing: A Chinese journalist and activist who disappeared while seeking refuge in Thailand has re-emerged in China, telling his wife by telephone that he is being held by police.
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Li Xin, 37, disappeared near Thailand's border with Laos last month, sparking fears for his safety and speculation that he had become the latest Communist Party critic deported or coerced into returning to mainland China by Thailand's military government.
Mr Li was a journalist with the Southern Metropolis Daily, a popular Guangzhou-based newspaper with a reputation for pushing the boundaries of government censorship. He fled China in October fearing persecution after revealing security agents had forced him into spying on fellow journalists and activists and for criticising censorship in the mainland's state-run media.
On Wednesday night, Mr Li's wife He Fangmei, who is four months pregnant, said she received a call from her husband when she was called into a police station in her home of Xinxiang, in central Henan province. She said he told her that he returned to China of his own free will to cooperate with investigations.
But Ms He said she felt his account was out of character and believed that he had been coerced into making those statements.
"He won't tell me where he is in China, but asks me to stay rested and live my life. He asks me not to contact any outsider for it does no good to him or me," Ms He told the Associated Press, adding that she had been banned from leaving mainland China. "But I know that's the pattern, and Li completely spoke contrary to his own will."
The Thai government has not commented on Mr Li's situation.
Thailand has long been a popular stop for Chinese dissidents and activists seeking political asylum and safe passage to a third country, frequently crossing by land via China's porous south-western borders.
But human rights groups have expressed alarm at an apparent spate of returnees from the country since the pro-Beijing Thai military junta took power, fearing they have fallen prey to illegal renditions or were spirited away by Chinese security agents allowed to operate in Thailand.
Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong publisher specialising in salacious tomes on the private affairs of Chinese leaders, disappeared from his holiday home in the beach town of Pattaya in October.
The Chinese-born Swedish national reappeared on Chinese television last month, tearfully confessing to a fatal drink-driving accident he committed in China more than a decade ago. Four other of Mr Gui's colleagues at the publishing house also vanished suddenly in Hong Kong and mainland China.
In November, two Chinese dissidents, Jiang Yefei and Dong Guanping, were repatriated to China from Thailand despite being recognised as refugees by the United Nations. Chinese authorities said they were suspected of illegal border crossing.
It comes as international rights groups express concerns that China's deepening crackdown on all forms of dissent now shows signs of extending beyond its own borders.
As well as targeting intellectuals, journalists and activists, hundreds of human rights lawyers have been detained or questioned in the past year.
