The story of this foreign media employee’s detention sends chills down the spines of any expatriate working, living, and investing in China.

The article published today on Zeit Online, the website for one of the biggest publications in Europe, comes from former China-based journalist Angela Köckritz and describes the detention of her colleague Zhang Miao. That detention is still ongoing.

Zeit says:

We have held off from publishing this story for a long time: A Chinese woman working as an assistant to DIE ZEIT has been detained for more than 12 weeks. We didn’t want to complicate diplomatic efforts being made to secure her release. But since these have yet to yield any result, we consider it necessary to make public now the fate of our colleague Zhang Miao. Angela Köckritz, our Beijing correspondent, is no longer in China. In this article, she describes her experiences with Chinese authorities.

The article located here describing the events leading up to and after the detention is one that Franz Kafka would have unfortunately loved.