Inside China's Crackdown On Human Rights Advocates

Cheng Hao is struggling to understand why his younger brother was arrested.

The 50-year-old retiree and occasional deliveryman says he was living a quiet, unremarkable existence in China's eastern port city of Nanjing. He had only seen his brother sporadically and never took much interest in his advocacy work, he says.

That is until July 24, when he heard that the authorities arrested his younger brother Cheng Yuan, a public interest advocate, two days before and took him into custody in the city of Changsha.

Now, Cheng Hao has become an outspoken advocate for his brother's freedom.

"After Cheng Yuan was seized, us family members have been kept completely clueless. We have no information," Cheng Hao tells NPR by phone.