Crackdown in China over letter calling for presidents resignation

Authorities in China have gone on the offensive as several people have been detained over an online letter calling for the resignation of Chinese President Xi Jingping.

The crackdown has widened as investigations into identifying the authors of the mysterious open letter calling for Xi to step down intensifies.

A Chinese dissident living in the United States, Wen Yunchao, said his parents and younger brother, who live in the southern province of Guangdong, were taken away by local police on Tuesday.

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Also known by his online alias “Bei Feng”, Wen told Al Jazeera that security officers had visited his family members several times, and questioned them repeatedly, before taking them away on Tuesday.

Last Friday, he had posted on the social media site WeChat that, “Officials in Jieyang and Jiexi county tried to force me to admit that I helped circulate the letter by putting pressure on my family. They promised if I told them who wrote the letter, I would not be held culpable.”

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