A Chinese legal crusader, blind since childhood, has escaped from extrajudicial house arrest in eastern China and has been smuggled to Beijing, according to a rights group that has tracked his case closely and claimed to be in contact.
The American Embassy in Beijing did not confirm or deny
rumors that Chen Guangcheng, whose some 19 months of confinement in his home
village had attracted worldwide attention, may have sought sanctuary through
U.S. or other Western diplomats.
“I can share with you Chen is now in the 100 percent safe
location in Beijing,” Bob Fu, president of the U.S.-based Christian rights
group China Aid Association, wrote in an email exchange. The group has released
reliable information about Chen in the past.
A separate statement by China Aid emphasized that Chen
has said he does not want to leave China.
Hu Jia, a fellow activist and longtime friend of Chen,
said he’d heard from a trusted source that Chen went to the U.S. Embassy. The
veracity of that assertion remained unknown early Friday evening.
Asked for comment about Chen being in Beijing or at the
embassy, embassy spokesman Richard Buangan responded, “Sorry, I don’t have any
information for you on this at this time.”
The apparently successful getaway by Chen comes at a
sensitive time – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will begin a series of
high-level meetings in Beijing next week, when the case could be raised. The
political situation in China has already been made delicate by the recent
purging of politburo member Bo Xilai amid one of the worst political scandals
to hit the nation in decades.
On Friday, a video of Chen was posted online in which he
confirmed that he’d fled his village of Dongshigu in Shandong province. Styled
as an open letter to Premier Wen Jiabao, seen by many as a reformer in China’s
authoritarian system, Chen named some of the men who he said rushed into his
home and beat him and his wife on multiple occasions.
“They all belong to the public security system, even
though they don’t wear any uniforms,” said Chen, 40, wearing a black tracksuit
jacket with a yellow Nike stripe and large sunglasses.
He urged Wen to open an investigation, saying that his
mistreatment had harmed the image of the Chinese Communist Party.
Chen was sentenced to 51 months in 2006 after his efforts
to expose local officials’ rough enforcement of China’s family planning laws,
including dragging women out of their homes to undergo forced abortions. After
being released from prison in September 2010, Chen, largely self-taught in the
law, was placed under a home detention that included rings of security personnel
said to stretch throughout the village.
The decision to make a bolt for freedom was, for the
family Chen left behind, an especially risky gambit. Still in Dongshigu are his
son, wife and mother.
He contemplated in the video the possibility that his
relatives may bear the brunt of “insane retribution.”
A blogger for one China-related site, Seeing Red in
China, posted audio of a Thursday telephone conversation with Chen’s nephew in
which the nephew said his father, Chen’s brother, had been taken away by men
who pried open their locks and kicked down the doors.
The nephew, Chen Kegui, said the group was accompanied by
the head of the local township. Between sobs, Chen said that after hearing his
mother in distress, he’d gone out with knives in hand and whacked at the
club-wielding men.
After the melee, Chen Kegui said, he’d escaped the scene
and was waiting to turn himself into the police. “I don’t know, I’m not clear
about what kind of society this is,” Chen Kegui said.
“Concerns about immediate and severe risks to the health
and safety of Chen’s family and those who assisted his escape can’t be
underestimated,” Phelim Kine, senior Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch,
said in an email exchange. “The plainclothes thug guards who have unlawfully confined
Chen and his family … have already demonstrated their willingness to use
physical violence against Chen and his family with total impunity.”
Kine added: “The anger and face loss these thugs are no
doubt feeling as a result of Chen’s escape – not to mention the lucrative
financial rewards that their ’services’ have earned them – makes the
possibility of retributive violence against Chen’s family and anyone suspected
of assisting his escape highly likely.”
It’s not clear exactly how Chen got out of the village –
Dongshigu is usually surrounded by plainclothes guards charged with keeping him
from leaving, or outsiders from visiting. When a McClatchy reporter sought
entrance to the area last year, guards in a silver Volkswagen gave high-speed
chase down a highway in the middle of the afternoon.
British actor Christian Bale, who starred in several
Batman movies, accompanied a CNN crew to the village in December and was pushed
and shoved by guards until he left.
“Not even Batman could enter the village, how could Chen
Guangcheng have left it,” said Hu Jia, Chen’s friend who added of the escape,
“This is a miracle.”
In an interview with CNN on Friday morning, He Peirong,
who has helped lead a campaign in China for Chen’s release, said that she and
others met Chen at a rendezvous point and drove him to Beijing on Sunday.
Peirong was reportedly detained later on Friday. Multiple
attempts to reach her by telephone and email were unsuccessful.
**Email: tlasseter@mcclatchydc.com