When the famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was released a week ago, reporters flocked to his house to interview him but they were disappointed. "I cannot talk," he insisted. "I am not allowed to say anything."

Ai might have been released months after being detained but the authorities had visibly silenced him. The same is true for the civil rights campaigner Hu Jia who was freed at the weekend after three and a half years in jail. His wife has said that they only have "limited freedom." There are policemen posted in front of their home - it feels like house arrest.

"I think it's a technique that the government is using to avoid the embarrassment and outcry that follows arrests at times, as we’ve seen in the case of Ai Weiwei," said Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch.

However, it will not "tolerate that people engage freely in human rights or criticize it."

Hard line against dissent to continue

Bequelin and other human rights activists in China are not optimistic that the government is about to relax its hard line towards dissent.

Amnesty International estimates that some 130 people have been arrested or persecuted since February, when anonymous calls for "Jasmine" protests inspired by uprisings across the Arab world triggered this latest wave of repression.

Many people are still missing, including human rights lawyers. Others, including the wife of this year's Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiabo, are under strict house arrest, without access to a telephone or the Internet.

AI invites Wen Jiabao to dinner

This is also a cause for concern in Germany. As Prime Minister Wen Jiabao dined lavishly with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday night, a group of human rights activists invited the Chinese head of state and his German host to an alternative banquet at the Brandenburg Gate.

Had Wen come, he would have been presented with a long list of reproaches and he would have heard the following address by Frederic Krumbein from Amnesty International Germany: "We welcome you Mr. Prime Minister as a friend of Germany in Berlin but as friends of China we are concerned about the many human rights violations in the People's Republic.

Amnesty International is concerned about the thousands of executions every year; we are concerned about torture and maltreatment in jails and labor camps. We are concerned about press and Internet freedom, about the persecution of independent religious communities and about the corrupt legal system."

Before Wen arrived in China, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said he would raise the issue of human rights with the prime minister’s delegation and that even the "most difficult questions" would be broached.

As German and Chinese government representatives enthuse about the strategic partnership and economic deals worth millions, activists want to ensure that the human rights situation in China does not get swept under the table.

Author: Ruth Kirchner / Richard Fuchs / act
Editor: Ziphora Robina