Chinese dissident Huang Qi, who campaigns for the parents of children killed in the Sichuan earthquake, has been arrested for "illegal possession of state secrets," his wife said on Saturday.

Qi was detained in the Sichuan capital Chengdu on June 10 and has not been seen since.

"Yesterday afternoon, his mother went to the police station in Wuhou district (of Chengdu) and was given the arrest warrant," his wife Zeng Li told AFP by telephone from the city in southwest China.

"His mother told them that since they had issued the arrest warrant, they should allow his lawyer to see Huang. But the police said that was not possible, that it would be another two months before the lawyer could ask to see him," she said.

Huang's lawyer, Mo Shaoping, however said the ruling was against the law and that he had the right to see his client, Zeng said.

Contacted by AFP, the Public Security Bureau (police) in Wuhou said it did not know Huang's current whereabouts.

According to his family, Huang, 44, was arrested because he was supporting parents of children killed in the May 12 quake and had requested government figures.

The 8.0-magnitude earthquake in Sichuan on May 12 left nearly 87,000 people dead or missing, and millions more homeless, according to official reports.

Many of the dead were children whose fate was linked to poor construction of school buildings which collapsed while other structure withstood the quake.

Some parents alleged that local officials colluded with builders in a corrupt scheme to allow them to get way with cheap and shoddy work.

Several rights organisations have accused the Chinese government of arresting numerous opponents in the last few months to prevent them disturbing the Olympic Games. Beijing has denied the charges.

Huang was jailed for subversion from 2000 to 2005 after he set up a website that independently investigated government corruption and advocated democracy.

The site had also called for the release of all those jailed for the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, which were crushed by the Chinese army.

Huang, who has received international awards for his efforts to publicise human rights violations in China, also listed missing persons on the site, mostly women and children kidnapped by human traffickers.

After being released, he resumed his rights work and opened the Tianwang Human Rights Centre, which claims to be the only non-government human rights organisation in China.

Huang is on a list of seven Chinese political prisoners which the co-president of the Greens group in the European Parliament, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Thursday sent to French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

He wants Sarkozy to demand the prisoners' release during his visit to Beijing for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on August 8.

The French president himself made this proposal after Cohn-Bendit last week in the European Parliament denounced Sarkozy's decision to go in the Chinese capital.