BEIJING (August 21, 2008) – NPPA member and photojournalist Jeffrey Rae, 28, along with video blogger Brian Conley, 28, both of eastern Pennsylvania, have been detained by Chinese police and are assumed to be in jail now in China for attempting to photograph pro-Tibet activists, including an artist who planned to project a giant laser beam onto a Beijing building at the Olympics, Rae's father said today.
The two were part of a group of six American pro-Tibet activists who are now apparently in a Chinese jail since the time they were seized on Tuesday.
"Jeff was there donating his time to the group Students for a Free Tibet," the photojournalist's father, Bill Rae, told News Photographer magazine today. "He was going to document the work of the demonstrators. A New York City artist named James Powderly was going to shine a laser beam onto the side of a building, and within seconds of starting it the police grabbed them all."
The day it happened (Tuesday) Conley's wife, Eowyn Rieke, received a text message from her husband that said, "In Jail. All fine."
Rae's father said they last heard from Jeffrey on Saturday, and that he thinks his son may have been under surveillance. "He has a new Apple iPhone and a calling card and we were talking with him twice a day," Rae said. "Everything seemed fine. But on Saturday – the last day we heard from him – he said he was being followed by a couple of cars. No matter how fast or slow he walked, he said that they kept up with him."
The photographer's father has also contacted the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Embassy in China, and Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Bob Casey (D-PA) about his son's plight.
"I'm very disappointed in the State Department's response to this," Rae said today. "I expected something more than what they've done. They told us that 'They should have known better,' and that the laws of China don't allow these pictures to be taken. From what I can see, they [the State Department] have done nothing."
Living in King of Prussia, PA, Rae is a 2003 graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology with a photojournalism degree who interned at the Cedar Rapids Gazette after college, his father said.
"Then he couldn't find a newspaper job, so now he's working for the Transport Workers Union in Wayne, Pennsylvania, as a graphic artist," the senior Rae told News Photographer magazine.
Students for a Free Tibet say the other activists missing since police seized them are Jeff Goldin, Michael Liss, and Tom Grant. SFT said the group was in Beijing to support and promote human rights and to call for freedom for the people of Tibet.
SFT said Rae and Conley shot and released video and photographs last week from a protest by SFT supporters at an ethnic theme park.
Rae said that he and his wife, Nancy, are anxious for any word from their son. Rae first joined NPPA in 1999.
