Chinese authorities prevented two well-known rights lawyers from leaving the country Thursday, the lawyers said, amid a growing crackdown following calls for anti-government protests, DPA reported.
Li Heping and Li Xiongbing arrived at Beijing Capital Airport to take a flight to Japan, where they were scheduled to attend a conference of legal scholars from the two nations.
"They just stopped us from leaving," Li Heping told the German Press Agency by telephone.
"No reason," Li said when asked what reason border police gave for stopping them from taking their flight.
The two men were not formally detained and were later allowed to leave the airport, he said.
On his Twitter account, Li Xiongbing quoted the police as saying: "Relevant departments notified us not to let you leave the country."
Police have detained, beaten or kept under house arrest at least a dozen other lawyers and scores of rights activists since last week's calls for anti-government "Jasmine" protests in Chinese cities.
"Over the past several days, authorities launched a concerted, large-scale crackdown on rights defence activists around the country, subjecting them to interrogation, house arrest, and detention, with a severity rarely seen in the past few years," US-based Human Rights in China said Thursday.
London-based Amnesty International Tuesday said Chinese security personnel had detained or held under illegal house arrest more then 100 activists in an apparent attempt to block protests.
Small numbers of protesters and hundreds of onlookers and police gathered in Beijing, Shanghai and several other cities last Sunday.
Open letters from the "China Jasmine Rallies organizers" published online Wednesday by the US-based Chinese pro-democracy website Boxun.com called for weekly anti-government protests from Sunday in 19 Chinese cities.
Chinese rights activists circulated links to the letters on Twitter, which is blocked in China but accessible via proxy servers, and some references also appeared on Chinese-based micro-blogs despite strict government controls.
The letters urged protesters to shout slogans including "Long live freedom! Long live democracy!" and call for an end to the one-party political system under the Communist Party.