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Chinese police broke into the home of a retired Shandong University professor as he was giving an interview to Voice of America, and now the broadcaster can’t reach him, VOA reported.
Wenguang Sun was giving a live telephone interview in which he criticized China’s foreign aid policies when he reported to VOA that police had forcibly entered his home and demanded that he end the interview, which he refused to do.
"I am entitled to express my opinion. This is my freedom of speech," the professor said as his last recorded words before the line went dead on live television.
VOA has been unable to reach Sun, and its attempts to get comment from China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and local public security bureaus were unsuccessful.
"While details about this incident are still not confirmed, VOA is monitoring the situation closely and will provide an update to program viewers once more information becomes available," a spokeswoman for VOA, which is funded by the U.S. government, said in a statement.
Sun previously published a controversial letter in which he urged President Xi Jinping to stop spending money on foreign aid, loans and investments in favor of spending the money in China. The letter was seen as an implicit rebuke of Xi’s Belt and Road initiative, a massive foreign infrastructure investment program.
