Authorities in the central Chinese province of Hubei have detained grass-roots election expert and former independent People's Congress deputy Yao Lifa at the school where he teaches, fellow activists told RFA.
Yao was taken away by police at his school in Hubei's Qianjiang city on Thursday, as the ruling Chinese Communist Party leadership gathered in Beijing for a massive military parade marking the end of the war with Japan 70 years ago.
Xu Qin, of the China Human Rights Observer group, said Yao isn't picking up his phone, and had responded briefly to a WhatsApp message sent on Thursday with the words, "It's not convenient for me to talk for a few days."
"Not convenient" is frequently used by Chinese activists to indicate that they are in custody or under close surveillance by the authorities.
"It looked as if they hadn't yet confiscated his phone," Xu said. But he said Yao had already been under close surveillance by police, making his 'disappearance' a concern.
Yao, 57, is an outspoken constitutional expert and a long-time civil rights and political activist, who was elected to the Qianjiang municipal People's Congress in 1998 as a rare independent candidate, where he used his platform to criticize government policy.
Xu said he had recently been involved in a discussion group on the popular chatroom QQ, and had been planning a video lecture for the group on the topic of standing as an independent candidate.
"We have already run this four times in the past, every Thursday, and it has been a great success," Xu said. "Everyone wants to hear what he has to say."
"But after the second time, he lost his freedom and was put under house arrest," he said. "The authorities took him a long way out of town for a meal, and told him not to do those lectures any more."
Repeated calls to Yao's wife's cell phone rang unanswered on Friday.
Past run-ins
In September 2011, Yao suffered multiple injuries after almost a month of secret detention and torture, his wife said at the time, following his release.
Yao, who inspired a national movement to field independent candidates in this year's government controlled People's Congress elections, also reported being starved in the detention center.
Yao's problems with the government date back decades, even before he became the first independent delegate to be elected to a municipal seat in the Qianjiang People's Congress.
After a 10-year struggle to get elected, he was shunted aside five years later and has been harassed ever since.
The Chinese authorities have warned that there is "no such thing" as an independent candidate, and that anyone hoping to stand for elections this year to the People's Congress will first have to clear "due legal procedures," the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Apart from a token group of "democratic parties" which never oppose or criticize the ruling Communist Party, opposition political parties are banned in China, and those who set them up are frequently handed lengthy jail terms.
China 'elects' more than two million lawmakers at the county and township levels during nationwide elections every five years to local-level People's Congresses in more than 2,000 counties and 30,000 townships.
But candidates must be approved by local party officials, who usually ensure that anyone lacking their support doesn't win, often by tampering with physical ballot boxes or paying for extra votes.
Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.