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By the time smog returns to northern parts of China, the arrest of Lu Guang, a photographer documenting environmental issues, was reported on Tuesday. After three weeks without news of him, Xu Xiaoli resolved to post a letter on Twitter Tuesday morning to report the disappearance of her husband, occurred in early November.
Lu Guang, a militant photojournalist, was invited on October 23 to visit Urumqi, Xinjiang Province, to meet with several local photographers. He then traveled to Sichuan Province on November 5 to participate in charity work. The day after the supposed arrival of the photographer, a friend of Lu Guang who was to welcome him reported his disappearance to Xu Xiaoli. She finally realized that her husband had been arrested by local authorities in Xinjiang, the province closely watched and whose population with a Muslim majority is subjected to repression and sinification unprecedented by Beijing.
Contacted by ReleaseXu Xiaoli said he did not know the reason for the arrest and has so far still not received any notification or official explanation from the authorities, despite his many requests. "At first, I did not mean anything, but after twenty days without news of him or the authorities, I decided it was time to talk about it", she explains from New York, where the couple is now living with their child. On the phone, in a thin and worried voice, Xu Xiaoli says he did not anticipate this arrest: "It's all the more surprising that he had not been worried lately by the Chinese authorities."
This has not always been the case for this 57-year-old man, from Zhejiang (southeast). A former silk factory worker, Lu Guang stepped into photography by graduating from the Tsinghua University Academy of Fine Arts in 1995. Since then, he has been dealing with Chinese societal issues and has makes environmental pollution his workhorse.
A courageous job
A whistleblower, close to the subjects he photographs and whose trust he knows, Lu Guang has captured the lives of Henan peasants, infected with HIV after selling their blood to survive or providing education for their children. This series will earn him to win in 2004 the first of his three World Press Photos. He was also the one who alerted the "cancer villages" he discovered in 2005. In a village in Shanxi (north-east of China) 50 of the 2,000 villagers are suffering from cancer, irradiated by water faucet polluted by industrial waste from neighboring factories.
Last year, his series Development and pollution was exhibited at the Visa festival for the image of Perpignan. Through his photos, Lu Guang highlights the ecological consequences of the forced economic development of the second world power.
In 2005, he exposed Wuhai's agricultural lands in Inner Mongolia, ravaged by the treatment of industrial waste dumped directly into the Yellow River and health consequences on local populations. "Lu Guang always tackles difficult topics, which some may even find disturbing. However, during our last meeting, in Perpignan, he told us that the spirits were opening and that his work was beginning to awaken the consciences on the ecological urgency ", says Jean-François Leroy, founder of the festival Visa pour l'image.
"His work has helped draw attention to environmental issues in China, especially in remote areas where victims have no say in voice," he said. Yaqiu Wang supports Human Rights Watch China. A courageous and meticulous work that has naturally earned him to be the regular target of the Chinese authorities. Last year, on the sidelines of his exhibition in Perpignan, he declared World "To be arrested four or five times a year", in addition to receiving regular threats on his reporting sites.
Civil society in the crosshairs
While the precise conditions of Lu Guang's arrest are still unclear, it is part of a context of deteriorating working conditions for independent journalists and photographers, who are particularly vulnerable in Xi Jinping's China. In July, a caricaturist was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for "Subversion towards the state". Civil society and whistleblowers are also in the sights, as Sun Wenguang, a retired human rights activist, arrested in a television interview by gunmen introduced to his home.
If his job got him into trouble, Lu Guang also pushed the Chinese authorities to become aware of environmental problems in China, according to Yaqiu Wang: "His work has spurred special attention from national and international media who have put pressure on the government to take action to address environmental issues." In 2014, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang declared "The war on pollution". Beijing has become a major partner in the Paris climate agreement and has pledged to invest $ 360 billion in renewable energy by 2020.
In her letter published Tuesday on her Twitter account, created for the occasion, Xu Xiaoli said she hoped for the next return of her husband.
Zhifan Liu Beijing correspondent
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