A Chinese professor who has been a critic of the Chinese has gone missing since Friday

Sun Wenguang was speaking to the station Voice of America via his telephone on Wednesday night when reportedly several officers barged into his apartment in the eastern city of Jinan. He can be heard exclaiming that “I have my freedom of speech” just before the line goes dead.

Before the line goes dead, Sun can be heard saying “throwing money around like this is of no benefit to our country and society.”

A former professor of physics, the 84-year-old Sun has long been critical of China’s communist leadership, most recently protesting China’s vast expenditures on development projects abroad at a time when many Chinese remain poor.

Sun was also an early co-signer of “Charter 08,” a call for democratic reform whose co-author, Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize but died last year while serving a sentence for subversion. Sun’s views have brought official retribution ranging from a seven-year prison sentence to being denied a passport and having his pension cut.

It is speculated that he is being held in a military-run hotel in Jinan.