KING OF PRUSSIA, PA (August 22, 2008) – The father of NPPA member and photojournalist Jeffrey Rae, 28, who was seized by Chinese police on Tuesday in Beijing while he tried to photograph pro-Tibet activists protesting, says this morning that he's been informed by the U.S. Embassy in China that his son is fine and is in a jail cell with two other Americans and eight others and that he will be released on August 30.
Bill Rae sent eMail to friends of his photojournalist son at 5:55 a.m. EST this morning saying "after being detained for 36 hours by Chinese police ... Jeff said he feels good." Photojournalist Matthew Rosenberg in Charlottesville, VA, at The Daily Progress, a friend of Rae's, was one of the recipients of the eMail.
Rae, along with video blogger Brian Conley, 28, both of eastern Pennsylvania, were taken into custody by Chinese police 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.
"Jeff was there donating his time to the group Students for a Free Tibet," Rae told News Photographer magazine on Thursday. "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."
According to Students for a Free Tibet, the demonstrators along with Rae and Conley have been sentenced to "ten days of administrative detention" by Chinese police. Under Chinese law, administrative detention can be used to punish people without a trial or court hearing. SFT says their information on the activists being sentenced and jailed came through the British and German embassies.
Before today's word from the Embassy, Saturday was the last time Bill and Nancy Rae had heard from their son. "He thought that he was under surveillance. He has a new Apple iPhone and a calling card and we were talking with him twice a day. Everything seemed fine. But on Saturday 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."
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.
Today in Hong Kong, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on China to stop harassing and obstructing journalists who are trying to document pro-Tibet demonstrations. CPJ says that in a separate event Thursday, two Associated Press photographers were "roughed up and questioned" by Chinese plainclothes security officers who confiscated the memory cards from their cameras.
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.
Rae joined NPPA in 1999.
