BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese human rights activist detained by police during the Olympic Games said Tuesday that she had returned to Beijing and that her dissident husband was being mistreated in prison.

Zeng Jinyan was one of several activists taken away during the games as part of Beijing's efforts to clear the city of dissent while it played host to the competition. It is a common move by authorities before and during sensitive periods to curb potential criticism or protests.

Zeng, who disappeared a day before the Aug. 8 start Olympics, said she and her infant daughter were held in the northeastern port city of Dalian.

"For 16 days I had no idea what happened outside," Zeng wrote in her blog but gave no details on where she was held or what had happened.

In a brief e-mail to The Associated Press, Zeng said she was back in her Beijing apartment but was still strictly monitored by plainclothes security agents, a common plight of activists in China.

They "are still staying in my yard. I am under surveillance. Phone calls are dangerous," Zeng wrote.

The spokesman's office of the Public Security Bureau had no immediate comment on Zeng's case.

Zeng is married to Hu Jia, a brash dissident who tirelessly chronicled the arrests and harassment of other activists before he was jailed earlier this year after being confined to his home for more than 200 days.

He started out fighting for the rights of HIV/AIDS patients but his scope expanded after the government gave little ground and he began to see China's problems as rooted in authorities' lack of respect for human rights.

Despite constant surveillance by security agents who watch her home and follow her around the city, the waif-like Zeng is a fierce human rights advocate who has used her blog to bring attention to her husband's case and other rights abuses.

Last year, she was named by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people.

In her blog, Zeng said Tuesday she was taken to see Hu before she was sent to Dalian.

During the visit, she said, she learned that she had not received any of the letters Hu had sent his family. "All his letters to us were confiscated" along with books on human rights she had sent him, Zeng wrote.

Even worse, she said, were the seven hours a day he had been assigned to rake leaves under the sun, a difficult situation for Hu, who suffers from cirrhosis. The punishment stemmed from Hu's public criticism of the prison and how "it was an abuse of prisoners' dignity and human rights," Zeng said.

"Hu Jia not only complained, he also spread this opinion among prisoners, which made it difficult for the prison's management," she wrote. "Officials said they hoped I could persuade Hu Jia not to be a bad influence."

Although the Olympics organizing committee promised to allow protests in three areas, none of the applications for permits were ever approved by authorities and many of those who applied were also detained.