German Journalist Arrested in China for Investigating "Cancer Villages"

BEIJING - A Beijing-based correspondent for the respected German weekly newspaper Die Zeit was detained for five hours Friday near so-called "cancer villages" along a severely polluted river in central China.

Georg Blume said in a telephone interview from the hotel room where he was being held in Shenqiu, Henan province, that he was accused of conducting "illegal interviews". He was cross-examined until he was requested to leave and "not come back".

At the time of his arrest by police, Blume was conducting research in one of the 20 villages that lie along the Shaying River where the cancer rates have been rising dramatically since the 1990s.