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Chinese lawyer, others held in Tiananmen clampdown

BEIJING — Chinese authorities detained a well-known rights lawyer and several other people Tuesday in an apparent bid to deter activists from marking the upcoming 25th anniversary of a brutal military suppression of prodemocracy protesters.

Beijing police placed Pu Zhiqiang under criminal detention early in the morning, according to Qu Zhenhong, an associate at Pu’s firm who has been in contact with his family.

Pu has mainstream prominence that is unusual for most dissidents, and news of his detention was circulating widely on Chinese microblogs. Despite his outspoken criticism of the government, Pu has been featured in magazines and interviewed about labor camps, against which he led high-profile campaigns.

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He has represented high-profile dissidents such as the artist Ai Weiwei as well as the family members of Communist Party members who died in custody of the party’s antigraft investigators after being tortured.

Two of Pu’s close friends, Beijing activist Hu Jia and Shanghai lawyer Si Weijiang, said the detention was probably the authorities’ retaliation against Pu for attending a seminar in Beijing on Saturday to discuss the June 4, 1989, military crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.

‘‘I believe the authorities are detaining Pu now so that he can’t do anything between now and the anniversary and so his detention will create a panic and terror among those who wish to remember that day,’’ Hu said by phone. Hu himself has been under house arrest since February, he said.

Several other people who attended the seminar, including Beijing-based scholars Hao Jian and Xu Youyu and blogger and free speech activist Liu Di, were similarly detained Tuesday, Hu said, citing their family members. Calls to their mobile phones rang unanswered.

The Chinese government has never fully disclosed what happened during the crackdown on prodemocracy protesters that killed hundreds, possibly more, and has branded the protests a ‘‘counterrevolutionary riot.’’

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Authorities try to stifle any public activities that remember those who died.

Pu had taken part in the 1989 demonstrations when he was a graduate student. The tumultuous protests lasted seven weeks until army troops backed by tanks crushed the unarmed protesters.

Public discussion of the crackdown remains taboo in China, making the seminar — reports of which trickled out to the public by social media postings — an unusually bold event despite being held in a private residence and attended by only about a dozen people.