On 11 August 2018, Shen Mengyu, a worker activist, was seized while eating dinner with her father by three unidentified men believed to be from China’s security forces and forcibly bundled into an unmarked car. Another activist, Xiao Hu, was detained at around the same time. Both were prominent supporters of the workers at the Jasic Technology factory who had been trying to establish an independent workers’ union.
Shen Mengyu had been one of the authors of an open letter recently published that was highly critical of the owner of Jasic Technology and the personnel manager. The police refused to investigate her disappearance and dismissed it as a “family dispute”. They claimed that all four surveillance cameras at the site of the abduction were “out of order”.
According to some reports Shen was being detained in a house in Shenzhen, an unofficial detention centre or “black jail”, and kept under 24 hour surveillance. Such methods are a common method of repression in China, according to the “China Worker” website, making it easier for police to keep someone indefinitely, and cut the person off from access to a lawyer, family or media.