“I met Chen Guangfu this morning. His health situation is okay,” said Ding Xikui, a lawyer authorised by Chen Kegui’s wife to represent her husband.

“His family are not allowed to leave the village. Chen escaped secretly. He came here to tell us what happened that night [when people broke in] and seeks help from the lawyer. He also supports the request from Chen Kegui’s wife to engage us as his lawyer in this case.”

Chen Kegui’s wife hired Ding and Si Weijiang after two other lawyers she had appointed were intimidated and harassed. But officials told the men that they could not act for Chen Kegui unless his wife came to the police station to file paperwork. She is currently in hiding due to fears for her safety.

Reuters’ Sui-Lee Wee met with Chen Guangfu to discuss his son’s case, his own reported torture, his brother’s departure, and other events of the past month.

He said he was restricted from leaving the village and that police in Shandong warned him they would increase the sentence for his son, Chen Kegui, who is being held on an attempted murder charge, if he gave interviews.

“I feel since they are already doing this, why can’t I say something?” Chen Guangfu said late on Wednesday in a teahouse in western Beijing. “I have the power to speak up.”

“I told them their claims have no legal basis, but are based on power or by their will to determine Kegui’s sentence. On this point, I’ll never be able to accept it,” he said, adding he planned to return to his village soon.

Local government and public security bureau officials were not immediately available for comment.

Chen Guangfu said that the security presence around Dongshigu has only intensified since his brother’s escape. As Charles Custer commented at ChinaGeeks in the immediate aftermath of Chen Guangcheng’s escape, this security apparatus had become a significant factor in the local economy, which various parties had a strong interest in sustaining. McClatchy’s Tom Lasseter reported from the area last week on the persistent cordon around the village.

A reporter attempting on Wednesday to walk the stretch of farm fields and groves between [Pengjiazhai] village and Chen’s hometown of Dongshigu was intercepted by two guards at a turn on a small dirt track. Their stools were positioned so that they could easily see anyone crossing to Dongshigu across a remaining flat expanse, the length of about six and a half football fields.

On the highway to Dongshigu, police cars and vans still zipped back and forth, their lights flashing. Men lurked in the meadows.

The continued siege of Dongshigu underscores the punishing weight with which China enforces its version of social order. It suggests, too, the steep costs of such an approach – the inertia of an authoritarian system that becomes difficult to change, and a messy legacy that it must then try to conceal.

See also Chen Guangfu’s earlier account of his torture by local security officers, news of Chen Guangcheng’s arrival in New York and the start of his family’s new life there and more on the Chen Guangcheng saga via CDT.

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Post tags: Beijing, Chen Guangcheng, Dongshigu, house arrest, legal defense, security guards, torture
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Feeling the warm sun on his face, blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng relaxed in an outdoor playground with his family Sunday, basking in perfect spring weather—and not having to worry about being beaten or harassed for the first time in years.

Chen, his wife, Yuan Weijing, and their two kids started a new life in a quiet, leafy Greenwich Village neighborhood full of university students sunbathing in grassy parks and yuppies walking their dogs. It’s a long way from their rural Shandong farmhouse—a virtual prison with blocked-up windows, surveillance cameras, and dozens of guards who threatened and beat would-be visitors ….

A TV-satellite truck has materialized outside Chen’s apartment block, which has also been staked out by reporters and photographers who scrambled when he appeared in the playground. (“It’s exciting. I’ve never heard so many police sirens as I did last night,” said one of Chen’s new neighbors about his arrival in the building.) But Chen didn’t want to grant media interviews on their first day in America. He and his wife are especially concerned about protecting the privacy of their 10-year-old son, Chen Kerui—who’d lived separately from his parents for several years so his father’s imprisonment and harassment wouldn’t disrupt his schooling—and their vivacious 6-year-old daughter, Chen Kesi, who succumbed to her jet lag by early evening. “She was fast asleep on the couch when I first arrived,” said one visitor, “but then she woke up and greeted me full of giggles.”

Speaking to WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, Jerome Cohen explained Chen’s likely course of study at New York University, his long term ambitions, and the negotiation process that brought the family to the US. Cohen also tactfully addressed the risk of Chen becoming a political pinball, and the question of how neatly his work against forced abortion and sterilisation might fit an American pro-life agenda. Chen, he said, “understands China’s need for birth control”, and was concerned primarily with civil liberties. “I don’t think,” he added, “we should associate Mr. Chen with one specific religious organization or with one particular political cause, however important it is.”

Giving his own views on China’s future direction, Cohen said that he is “very optimistic” for the long term and “fairly optimistic” for the medium term, but “quite pessimistic” about the immediate future.

Chen’s studies could begin as soon as next week, according to the South China Morning Post. How long they will continue, however, is unknown.

While in New York, Chen will study Chinese, American and international law. Lectures will be given in Chinese since Chen does not speak English. The programme was scheduled to last a year, but could go longer if necessary, Cohen said. “His study will probably begin next week or the week after,” Cohen said. “We will see when he is ready. There is no rush ….”

Cohen said Chen understood that few activists had had much success trying to influence domestic reform after leaving the country.

Nonetheless, Cohen said he believed Chen had a good chance of returning should he focus on legislation to protect the disabled. He noted that more Chinese activists had been pressing for legal reforms without being jailed, such as civil rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang .

The Guardian’s Tania Branigan reported that Chen may return to China in as little as a year:

The couple … will not be working towards degrees, [Cohen] added. “Maybe he’ll go back to China quickly at the end of the year, if things look good,” Cohen said. “Initially he’s going to put in a year of serious study and he’ll feel his way.”

Chen has said he wants to return to China at some point, although some activists and dissidents who have left have not been allowed back into the country. “The Chinese government has a long history of preventing the return of critics who have been abroad,” warned Nicholas Bequelin, senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“Some parties involved in the negotiations are fairly confident Chen will be able to return … [But] it is not entirely clear what will happen.”

Another article at The Guardian illustrated what may be the worst case scenario, reporting the efforts of several Tiananmen-era dissidents to secure a safe return to China. They include student leader Wang Dan, who recently welcomed Chen to America and assured him that exile, thanks to the Internet, no longer imposed the same limitations as in the past.

It’s been almost 23 years since the optimism that gripped China during the seven-week Tiananmen protests was brutally swept away. Now, five exiled Tiananmen leaders have written an open letter calling on Beijing to allow them to return home in the spirit of human rights at a time when “China is undergoing profound changes”.

“I want to be able to visit my parents,” said Wang Dan in an email. “The Chinese government not allowing us to return is another continuous punishment ….”

While a number of dissidents have returned to China, the permission to do so comes attached with stipulations that most dissidents refuse to accept.

Xiang Xiaoji, now a lawyer in New York, explains: “I will never apologise for anything. What I did was right, and I will never promise to stop pushing for democracy in China. I will not accept their political conditions to return home,” Xiang says. “Besides, I’m not scared of a jail sentence. I’ve been in exile for 23 years, and I’m 55 now. I’ve never regretted what I did in the past, so why would I be scared of what I’ll do in the future?”

At TIME’s Global Spin blog, on the other hand, Austin Ramzy raised the possibility that media coverage of Chen’s saga, regardless of its tone, has sown the seeds of an influence that could weather a wintry exile:

… Chen is still not … widely known in China, but the past month’s coverage in domestic media has raised his profile. While many Chinese readers will agree with criticism of the U.S. role in protecting Chen for six days after he escaped from house arrest, they will also be curious to learn more about who he is. And his story is as compelling as the role of officials in Shandong is troubling. Even before Chen’s escape from house arrest, there was a grassroots effort to support him, and average citizens like former English teacher He Peirong found themselves drawn to his cause.

Earlier this spring I interviewed a migrant worker about a strike at the electronics factory where he was employed in Shenzhen. At the end of our discussion he said he knew that TIME had once interviewed the blind lawyer. “Blind lawyer?” I asked, shocked that a factory worker would know about a man who had been under one form of arrest or another since 2005. “Yes, you know, the blind lawyer Chen,” he replied, adding that he had been inspired by him and closely followed his case …. Chen’s influence may, as State media suggest, diminish during his exile. But not if they keep talking about him.

Also uncertain are the broader implications and lessons of Chen’s case. From the Associated Press:

Bonnie Glaser, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, doubted that Chen’s case would start a trend. She pointed to exceptional factors — Chen is blind and had broken bones when he sought US help, while China was eager to ensure smooth talks with Clinton ….

But Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch said that — even if it is unlikely that droves of dissidents will seek shelter at the US embassy — the Chen case showed activists inside China the possibilities of pushing the government.

“I have trouble imagining that people who will have watched this saga unfold won’t in some ways feel empowered by it,” she said ….

Sharon Hom, executive director of Hong Kong- and New York-based group Human Rights in China, said the Chen case did not give simple answers on whether quiet or loud diplomacy works best with China as many factors — from international attention to Chinese netizen activism — had been factors.

At The Atlantic, James Fallows suggested that one lesson was not to rush too quickly to judgement based on incomplete information.

… [L]ooking back on the evolution of the administration’s foreign policy, I contended in my long story about Obama early this year that U.S. positioning toward China was actually one of the more chessmaster-like features of Obama’s overall policy. That is, love the current administration or hate it, you really should consider China-handling one of the more successful parts of its record ….

[The Chen Guangcheng] episode has so far turned out better than it easily might have. And the State Department and White House negotiators on the U.S. side, whatever mistakes or misjudgments they may have made, appear to have been something other than the feckless clowns portrayed in the first wave of press coverage, based on the question of whether they had sold Chen Guangcheng out.

… We naturally crave “what does it all mean?” “who screwed up?” “who won and lost?” certainty, but there are times when the immediately available answers to those questions are likely to be wrong. In our little part of our journo-sphere we will try to do our part by taking this lesson to heart.

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Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, exiles, forced abortion, forced sterilization, human rights in china, human rights watch, James Fallows, Jerome cohen, new york city, news media, pu zhiqiang, State Department, Tiananmen, wang dan, White House
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After a serial of trials which first began in April 2009, Wu Ying was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, according to the Zhejiang Higher People’s Court website.

Legal experts immediately interpreted the sentence as life imprisonment under China’s legal environment.

Wu’s former lawyer Zhang Yanfeng said to media, “She’s been sentenced to life imprisonment, barring any wrongdoing in the next two years.” Zhang said the verdict was expected as provincial high courts are subordinate to the Supreme People’s Court.

New York University law professor Jerome Cohen told The New York Times last month that the SPC’s decision “seems a typical Chinese judicial compromise between what those who call for the death penalty wanted and what Wu’s many supporters, both popular and professional, have called for”. The new suspended death sentence may be an attempt to maintain a similar balance, compared with the lighter sentences Cohen held out as another possible outcome. But human rights researcher Joshua Rosenzweig described it as “a gutless decision, one that ignores core problems with the case“. Although some supporters expressed satisfaction at Wu’s likely escape from execution, questions about uneven punishment and institutional problems remain. From Chuin-Wei Yap at China Real Time Report:

The case attracted widespread media attention for the severity of the sentence and the long-running campaign in China’s blogosphere to save her.

Many of her supporters wondered aloud why she was facing death when corrupt officials found guilty of similar crimes were often granted lighter sentences ….

For the public that’s kept the issue alive for more than three years, it’s a gratifying conclusion. “It’s not just Wu Ying,” Wang Shuo, a prominent magazine editor, wrote on the Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo. “If it’s non-violent financial crime, no one should die.”

“Wu Ying was unlucky to run into hole in the legal system,” added another Sina Weibo user writing under the handle Chaoxin Xinzhixing. “When will China’s legal system be more robust, so the public can be convinced?”

Tea Leaf Nation’s survey of Sina Weibo reactions reveals similarly mixed views, and notes that over 3.5 million posts on the subject were culled from search results overnight [Update: TLN reports that many of the culled comments later re-appeared].

Many netizens hailed the result. @杭州恰恰 wrote, “This is…a victory for public opinion! [Responsiveness to] public opinion is progressing!” @洪陈纷纭 wrote: “The power of democracy; the power of Weibo.”

Unfortunately, many netizens felt their victory, if it was theirs at all, was a Pyrrhic one. @Q版温故‘s comment aptly captured netizen sentiment: “No matter what, the result is progress. But this time, the progress is mostly because of the contributions of public opinion, and not law itself.” Instead of law, many commenters perceived realpolitik, hard at work. @闫英士 opined, “The real meaning is this: The death sentence is to save face, the commutation is to quiet citizen rage. But it all has nothing to do with Wu Ying herself, and certainly doesn’t prove the independence of the so-called judiciary.”

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Post tags: death penalty, death sentence, execution, Jerome cohen, Supreme People's Court, Wang Shuo, Wu Ying, Zhejiang
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From the Associated Press:

“I believe that no matter how difficult the environment nothing is impossible if you put your heart to it,” he told a cheering crowd at NYU shortly after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport on Saturday evening.

“We should link our arms to continue in the fight for the goodness in the world and to fight against injustice. So, I think that all people should apply themselves to this end to work for the common good worldwide ….”

“For the past seven years, I have never had a day’s rest,” Chen said through a translator, “so I have come here for a bit of recuperation for body and in spirit.”

Chen thanked the U.S. and Chinese governments, along with the embassies of Switzerland, Canada and France.

Some Americans welcomed Chen not with cheers but, in comments collected by Offbeat China, with complaints about the burden he would place on the US taxpayer. The combined hourly rate of the several US officials who negotiated on his behalf is likely quite high; however, an NYU spokesman told The Wall Street Journal that, while he could not discuss financial specifics, “I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone that there have been significant offers of philanthropy regarding Mr. Chen.”

With Chen and his family finally out of China, diplomats involved in the wrangling that secured their departure anonymously disclosed their account of the negotiations to The Washington Post.

Over the course of the negotiations, the Chinese never put any proposals on the table. Their role was strictly reactive. At the end of each meeting, Cui would leave to report the latest terms to Chinese leaders. At times, he would enter the next meeting having come directly from the compound reserved for China’s highest leaders.

“We would put something forward, and were getting answers back almost immediately from the highest levels,” one senior administration official said. “I have never seen the Chinese government working this rapidly and efficiently.”

Meanwhile, the 12-hour time difference with Washington meant U.S. negotiators were getting little sleep, spending most of their night hours briefing the White House and State Department via secure lines at the embassy.

Negotiating with Chen could sometimes be as difficult as negotiating with Chinese officials. Conversations with him could be deeply moving. He often seemed fragile — a blind man with few possessions, sleeping in a small unadorned room in the barracks of the embassy. He talked of how much he missed his wife and worried about his children.

But he could pivot in an instant, displaying a steely shrewdness as he detailed the demands he wanted conveyed to Chinese officials.

One Chinese scholar quoted by the South China Morning Post drew a pessimistic conclusion from the episode:

“It was an acceptable solution among the three parties after a series of negotiations between Beijing and Washington,” Professor Shi Yinhong , a Sino-US expert at Renmin University, said. “But I hope Chen’s incident is just an isolated case, not a trend.”

Shi said mainland scholars were more suspicions about US intentions towards China’s internal issues after Chen’s case. It came at a sensitive time, just before the Sino-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

“I think our leadership should remain vigilant … because the Chen case showed Washington doesn’t watch us only on our human rights,” Shi said.

“It also wants to affect our politics at the highest level.”

But Orville Schell was among many who pointed to encouraging signs for the crucial US-China relationship in the two sides’ conduct during the crisis.

… China showed either a new maturity, or a much keener sense of realism, perhaps recognizing that relations with the U.S. are even more important than the fate of a single dissident, even if his flight is represents a sublime loss of face ….

In many ways, it is tempting to look back at the whole transaction as something of a hopeful breakthrough. With a minimum of posturing, the two countries did manage to work their way through a very difficult problem. Evidently, each saw sufficient common interest to find a mutually agreeable solution. That is a very hopeful sign.

At The New Yorker, Evan Osnos saw similar grounds for cautious optimism in Chen’s expression of gratitude to the Chinese government for their “restraint and calm”:

… It might not have been the first thanks on everyone’s lips. One could read that as a diplomatic comment, intended to protect those still in China, including his mother (whose house is reportedly being fenced off by local officials) and the fellow dissidents who helped him escape.

But it must also be read as the measure of a man with extraordinary presence of mind. He is, after all, correct: by the standards of official Chinese conduct in many other areas, its handling of Chen’s departure was restrained and calm. And that is one of the modestly encouraging facts to emerge from the final accounting of this whole complicated business: presented with diplomatic dynamite, neither China nor the United States succumbed to its worst instincts. The American handling of the affair was far better than the fevered early indictments suggested, and the Chinese have, so far, kept their promises to Chen and the United States. Those involved should take confidence from that ….

And from Bloomberg:

… With Chen now in New York, the two sides can return to nurturing a relationship that has progressed to a point that a case like his can be handled without a serious rupture, said Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

“It reinforces the trend since late 2010 for the two leaderships to find a way to steer around sensitive subjects and promote pragmatic near-term relations,” Paal said ….

“I think this brings the matter to a close,” Bonnie Glaser, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in an e-mail. “Both countries will focus on their domestic politics, upcoming elections in the U.S. and the 18th Party Congress in China later this year.”

While many headlines hailed Chen’s arrival in the US as an ending, Perry Link told NPR that although “the tangle is finished for this particular case, it seems … the problems of human rights in China are not problems of one or two people whose cases have to ‘be resolved,’ quote-unquote. It’s a very deep, underlying long-term problem and we should view it that way.” As others stressed, the news brings no resolution for family and supporters still in China. From Jonathan Watts at The Guardian:

Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch said Chen’s departure was no cause for celebration as his family remained under pressure and there may be less incentive for the central government to investigate wrongdoing by the local authorities.

More importantly, Bequelin said, it raised questions about the wider environment for activists. “This is a reflection that there is no room for human rights defenders in China. We don’t know if this will turn into a temporary stay or exile, but in either case it begs the questions why someone like Chen Guangcheng cannot freely operate in China. What is it that stops the authorities from tolerating or even embracing someone like Chen?”

Bequelin’s comments were echoed, perhaps surprisingly, in a weibo post by Global Times editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin, quoted by Didi Kirsten Tatlow at The New York Times: “Today, Chen and his family have already taken an American airplane to New York. It makes people feel regret and sigh that in China today this is the only way to solve his problem.” His wistfulness was not matched by an editorial in his paper, which took a dismissive tone: “The drama around Chen is a colorful bubble. Nothing is left when it bursts.” Otherwise, as Tatlow wrote, Chinese media were largely silent about his departure, focusing instead on athletic victories, the South China Sea, or the ongoing clean-up of ‘foreign trash’. The famously independent Caixin did publish a report on Chen’s arrival in New York, but William Farris noted on Google+ that this was quickly taken down.

While some expressed reservations or disappointment, there was broad approval of Chen’s decision to leave from activists remaining in China. The Guardian’s Jonathan Watts spoke to several:

He Peirong – who played a key role in the escape by driving Chen from Shandong to Beijing – said she sympathised, even though the reverberations of Chen’s flight remain unclear. “I support any decision made by Chen, but it’s too early to say whether his departure is a good thing for China’s rights movement. Things are not settled. Problems are not solved. His family is still in China. The people who helped him escape are still in China.”

He – who was detained for several days after Chen’s escape and remains under surveillance – spoke of her admiration for Chen.

“He has done more than you could expect from any individual … Although he has experienced so much injustice and so many threats, he sticks to his beliefs. He is like a piece of jade: always smooth and warm.”

Chen’s lawyer Liu Weiguo said similarly that, despite his reservations about the outcome, “for the Chinese rights movement he has done more than enough. We can’t ask him to do any more. Now he needs time to rest.” Teng Biao, who precipitated the second phase of the diplomatic crisis by persuading Chen to abandon the idea of remaining in China, stood by his earlier position, telling Watts that “[Chen's] safety and freedom are the priority. Whether this is a good thing for the rights movement is secondary now.”

None seemed to entertain any hope that the concessions granted to Chen and his family were signs of a wider easing. From Reuters:

“There won’t be any big changes for us now that Chen Guangcheng has left. There are still many reasons to keep up control and stability preservation,” Jiang Tianyong, a Beijing human rights lawyer, said in a telephone interview, referring to the Communist Party’s terms for controlling dissidents.

Jiang, a long-time campaigner for Chen’s freedom, said he remained under house arrest, despite police officers’ earlier promises that he would be released after Chen left.

“I still don’t know when they’re going to let up,” Jiang said of the police restrictions. “This is no way forward, but especially with the 18th party congress, the high pressure will probably only grow, not decrease.”

As in recent days, the most urgent concern was for Chen Kegui, Chen’s nephew, who faces charges of intentional homicide for attacking intruders into his father’s home when Chen Guangcheng’s escape was first discovered. From The Wall Street Journal:

Lawyers who have taken up the case of Mr. Chen’s nephew said it wasn’t clear how Mr. Chen’s departure would affect the outcome.

“It’s hard to say, since China never plays its cards in the proper order,” said Chen Wuquan, a Guangzhou-based lawyer whose license was revoked by local authorities just as he was preparing to travel to meet with Chen Kegui this month.

“I think [the authorities] will be more strict in dealing with Chen Kegui,” said Liang Xiaojun, another of the lawyers involved in the case. “They won’t care about the international viewpoint.”

While a number of lawyers volunteered to defend Chen Kegui, his family’s eventual choice of Ding Qikui and Si Weijiang was rejected by local officials, supposedly at his own request. Chen Guangcheng told The Financial Times that similar obstruction had occurred before his own sentencing to four years in prison in 2006. “That this naked, shameless abuse can still happen again six years later …,” he said, adding that he suspected Chen Kegui had been tortured to make him accept a public defender in place of the lawyers appointed by his family.

The longer term fear arising from Chen Guangcheng’s departure is that he may, like others before him, be barred from re-entering China and find himself trapped and increasingly powerless abroad. Wang Dan argued in a recent New York Times op-ed, and Human Rights Watch’s Phelim Kine told The Wall Street Journal on Saturday, that the Internet had changed the nature of political exile. Nevertheless, worry about Beijing’s enthusiasm for exporting dissent muted Orville Schell’s optimism about the state of Sino-US relations. From Asia Society:

The tactic of facilitating the most prominent critics of the Party to go into exile was something like the outsourcing of the manufacture process of a very polluting and unwelcomed home-based industry. There might initially be some complaints from dispossessed workers, but ultimately all, or almost all, would be forgotten, and the ongoing problem, if there were one, would be someone else’s.

With dissidents like Fang Lizhi and Wei Jingsheng, Chinese officials learned that interest in the opinions of such activists and concern for their well-being quickly waned once they were abroad. The political oblivion usually followed rather rapidly. Moreover, a short while after they left China, these once-celebrated voices seemed to lose the requisite standing necessary to being taken seriously as authorities on Chinese affairs. The process of being exiled effectively turned them into political eunuchs. Far better, so the Chinese leadership seemed to have concluded, to endure a few days of high intensity bad press as a prelude to watching a dissident parked harmlessly and unheard in Queens, sink out of site. The alternative was to have someone like Liu Xiaobo stuck in a Chinese jail writing damning essays and winning Nobel Prizes. (At least so far, neither Liu nor the Chinese Government has shown any inclination to engage in such export tactics in his case.)

In his interview with NPR, Perry Link also described the history of this trend:

The record of dissidents leaving China has changed pretty dramatically over the last 23 years, since the Tiananmen Massacre. At the time, the Chinese government was angry to see people like Liu Binyan and Fang Lizhi and Fu Xiao Jun and many, many others who fled and congregated at the time at Princeton University, where I was teaching. There were about 25 of them. And the government didn’t like that because they wanted them to come back. They were wanted and so on.

By now, I think we should say that the Chinese government’s policy has changed about 180 degrees. Now, they’re quite happy to see what they view as troublemakers like Chen Guangcheng be exiled, because the record over the last two decades of people who’ve come out has been that their influence inside China dramatically declines, and they feel frustrated. And their followers back in China feel frustrated.

So this exit of Chen Guangcheng is in one sense a win-win situation, because he and his family are now safe. And back in China they weren’t and didn’t feel that they were safe. And the Chinese government wins because it gets rid of a thorn in its side.

Link continued to describe Chen’s rural background, a potent contrast with that of the sterotypical Chinese urban-intellectual dissident. Sui-Lee Wee and Terril Yue Jones explore similar ground in a profile at Reuters:

“It was his own feelings of discrimination from the time he was a kid that really got him interested in law,” said Jerome Cohen, a China law expert and professor at New York University’s law school. Cohen has become a supporter and confidante of Chen.

“He felt the community leaders, instead of making blind people an object of sympathy, treated them as an unneeded burden on the community, people who didn’t pull their weight, people who claimed they shouldn’t pay tax like able-bodied farmers.

“That was what started him off ….”

“My first impression was I could be talking to a Chinese equivalent of Gandhi,” Cohen recalled. “This is a man with a quiet charisma, considerable intelligence, very articulate and a steely determination.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, diplomacy, Evan Osnos, exiles, Fang Lizhi, Global Times, homicide, human rights watch, Jerome cohen, Jiang Tianyong, jonathan watts, liu binyan, Liu Xiaobo, new york city, Nobel Prize, Orville Schell, perry link, Sino-U.S. Relations, South China Sea, Teng Biao, Tiananmen, wang dan
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United Airlines Flight 88 landed at New York/Newark Liberty International Airport to little fanfare after the U.S. State Department prohibited public and media access.

Less than two hours later, Chen, 40, spoke from New York University, where he will participate in a fellowship.

“I am very grateful to the assistance of the American Embassy and the promise of the Chinese government to keep protection of my rights as a citizen in the long term,” Chen said to a mob of reporters and onlookers. “I am very gratified to see the Chinese government has been dealing with the situation with restraint and calm.”

The activist indicated he had been granted partial U.S. citizenship and asked people to “promote fairness and justice in China.”

Passengers, including reporters, on the flight were not permitted to speak with Chen and his family, but a New York Times reporter did have a brief interview with him:

Mr. Chen left Beijing with his wife and two children, and like most events surrounding his case, the departure was shrouded in secrecy until the last minute. Even on the plane, flight attendants took pains to keep other passengers from invading his privacy, drawing a curtain swiftly around the first rows of the plane where he was sitting with his family.

But in a brief conversation on the plane, Mr. Chen said, “I don’t really feel that happy, but rather sentimental.”

“After all the suffering for years, I don’t have those tearful moments anymore,” he said, “but I do feel something inside.” He looked calm, but his hands shook as he talked about leaving a country he has tried to change for years from within.

“I’m very clear what kind of role I’m playing right now. Opportunity and risk exist at the same time,” he said.In Washington, the State Department praised the Chinese government in a statement that reflected its handling of the case from the start: understated and nonconfrontational, despite the emotions and high stakes involved for both countries. “We also express our appreciation for the manner in which we were able to resolve this matter and to support Mr. Chen’s desire to study in the U.S. and pursue his goals,” the State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said.

See also a report by Melinda Liu in the Daily Beast. Hexie Farm drew a cartoon depicting Chen’s flight to the U.S. Read much more about Chen Guangcheng via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, dissidents, exiles, nyu
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Chen Guangcheng told The Associated Press that he has left the hospital where he’d been staying and is at the Beijing airport. He expects to leave for the U.S. later Saturday.

He says his wife and two children are with him, but that they do not yet have their passports. Also with him are hospital and border control staff.
Chen escaped illegal house arrest in his rural town last month and sought the protection of U.S. diplomats. He had been awaiting permission to travel to the U.S. to study.

From the Twitter account of ITV’s Beijing correspondent Angus Walker:

#Chen left hospital in convoy of unmarked cars and one van with blocked out windows

— Angus Walker (@anguswalkeritv) May 19, 2012

And from NBC’s Adrienne Mong:

Lots of western media at Beijing airport: crews just scrambled to get a shot of luggage they think belongs to #ChenGuangcheng and family.

— Adrienne Mong (@adriennemong) May 19, 2012

Chen is expected to travel to New York, where he has been offered a scholarship at New York University Law School.

Read more about Chen’s escape from house arrest, his stay in the U.S. Embassy, and the mistreatment of his extended family by local Linyi officials. Read all of CDT’s coverage of Chen over the past five years.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, Chen Guangcheng, dissidents
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Wu’er, 44, escaped China in 1989 after authorities crushed the pro-democracy movement centered on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Now a citizen of Taiwan, Wu’er said that a Chinese police warrant for his arrest remains valid. His parents, in their 70s and in poor health, have repeatedly been denied permission to travel abroad to see him, he said.

During two earlier, unsuccessful attempts to turn himself in to Chinese authorities — in Macau in 2009, and Tokyo in 2010 — “I managed to become the ‘most unwanted’,” said Wu’er. “I hope the Chinese Ambassador [in D.C.] will be inspired by U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke, just like he took in Chen Guangcheng.”

When Wu’er got to the embassy’s doors today, no one inside would acknowledge his existence, an AFP article reports:

Wu’er Kaixi, 44, who now lives in Taiwan, wants to see his frail and aging parents in Urumqi, northwest China, as well as ignite a dialogue on reform with China’s communist leadership — even if it means standing trial.

But when he went to the bunker-like Chinese embassy in the US capital, the dissident activist found the smoked-glass doors locked, and no one responded when he rang the doorbell and dialed an off-hours telephone number.

Telephone calls into the embassy by an AFP reporter at the scene also went unanswered.

[...]“If I want to go home, what does it take? It’s office hours. I call then and ring the bell, but no one comes,” he said, adding that he would next take his case to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire blog quotes Wu’er on the hardships of living in exile:

“Exile itself is a shameful phenomenon for mankind, for a nation, for a country. Countries that exile people are not civilized, great nations. The exile lives an enormous mental and spiritual torture; exile is a phenomenon that needs to be eliminated if we are looking for civilization and social development,” he said.

He added: “I want to send a message to the world, to show how absurd the Chinese government is. The world has gotten used to Chinese absurdity, and now takes it for something that’s almost correct.”

Mr. Wuer said that he is banned from entering China and that his parents are not allowed to travel to see him, he said. “I want to see them, even if it means a prison visit,” he said by phone Friday morning.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dissidents, exiles, wu'er kaixi
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“They put me on a chair, bound my feet with iron chains and locked my hands with handcuffs behind my back,” he said. “They pulled my hands upwards forcefully. Then they slapped me in the face.”

“They first asked me if I knew what this was about. I said ‘I don’t know’. So they beat me and slapped my face. Only on one side, not the other. And they trampled my feet with their leather shoes.”

He told them it was him who had helped Mr Chen because he did not want to implicate others involved, but then realised they knew more details.

”I resisted for a really long time,” he said. ”In the end I couldn’t hold out any more.”

The officials also told Chen Guanfu that his son, Chen Kegui, had hacked and wounded officials. Chen Kegui has since been charged with “intentional homicide”, but his lawyer says he was acting in self-defence.

The full isunaffairs interview with Chen Guangfu is on YouTube and has been translated in full by a CNN reporter, Steven Jiang, on his blog:

China Human Rights Defenders has more details about the situation involving Chen’s brother.

Meanwhile, in a phone call to a U.S. Congressional hearing on his situation, Chen defended Chen Guangfu and Chen Kegui. The Washington Post reports:

Chen complained Tuesday that his elder brother and nephew had both been beaten by Chinese authorities since Chen fled house arrest in late April.

Chen said a charge of homicide brought against his nephew was “trumped up” as he was acting in self-defense after being subjected to a three-hour beating that left him bleeding.

“This is a pattern,” Chen said. “This is not the first time it happened against my family.”

Rights activist Bob Fu, who translated Chen’s comments, earlier testified that Chen’s nephew, Chen Kegui, using a kitchen knife, had injured several people who had burst into his home without warrants.

Joshua Rosenzweig explains that “intentional homicide” in this case is similar to “attempted murder” since the victim survived.

Chen and his family are awaiting travel to the U.S. where Chen has been offered a scholarship to New York University Law School. Officials have told them they should receive passports within 15 days. From BBC:

Mr Chen said government officials came to see him on Wednesday and completed passport applications for him, his wife and their two children.

He said the officials told him the passport would take 15 days to issue, without giving a definite date.

“People from the immigration administration department have been here. We had our pictures taken and forms filled out. (They said) within 15 days,” Mr Chen said.

“They didn’t promise when we’ll get the passport. They didn’t say anything like we will definitely get the passport on a certain day, etc. There was nothing like that told to us,” he added.

Read much more about Chen’s current situation via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, Chen Guangcheng, dissidents, torture
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If the drama over Mr. Chen’s fate has placed a harsh spotlight on China’s capacity for repression and created a diplomatic migraine for the White House, it has also been something of a boon to Mr. Fu, 44. His organization, ChinaAid, is at the crossroads of a growing movement among American Christians agitating for religious freedom in China and the wider dissident network inside the United States, as well as members of the underground church in China trying to practice their faith in a hostile environment ….

But some critics say that Mr. Fu’s high-profile role as an advocate for religious freedom is a double-edged sword. It has raised awareness of human rights abuses. But his close association with Republicans and evangelical Christians, the critics say, risks stoking China’s fears that foreign forces are plotting to subvert the ruling Communist Party.

“Bob’s heart is in the right place, but sometimes in his zeal to bring attention to his cause he gets sucked up into the partisan maelstrom of Washington,” said one American human rights advocate who works closely with ChinaAid and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to offend Mr. Fu.

Fu speaks for himself at Foreign Policy, explaining “why I’m working to save my homeland, one soul at a time.”

ChinaAid, the organization I run, attempts to advance religious freedom and rule of law in China, softening the soil for the Gospel. We provide money and training for legal activists and sponsor the only nationwide house-church magazine, of which 80,000 copies are distributed nationwide.

We aid non-Christians as well; through our network of supporters, we helped Chen — who by God’s common grace advanced the rule of law and protection of life in China– take his case to the American people ….

In the Bible, the book of Romans says, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil and cling to what is good and always serve each other in love.” With this kind of message, Christianity will blossom. This is the only way freedom — both individually and nationally — will spread in China.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CECC, Chen Guangcheng, China AId, China Aid Association, Christianity, Christopher Smith, house church, religion, religious freedom, religious persecution
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Perhaps the most immediately urgent situation is that of Chen’s nephew. Chen Kegui is now being held on charges of attempted murder after he took a kitchen cleaver to guards breaking into his father’s house in the middle of the night.

Chen [Guangcheng], who is now receiving treatment in a Beijing hospital and preparing to go to the United States to study, said his nephew was a scapegoat of officials angered by Chen’s audacious escape and demands that they be investigated.

Asked why police in his home province of Shandong in east China would arrest his nephew, Chen said, “Revenge.”

“I think this is revenge gone wild, and it’s their final battle,” he told Reuters by telephone from the Beijing hospital where he is being kept ….

“They beat him savagely,” Chen said of his nephew. “He was beaten so badly that his face was covered in blood. I heard he was beaten so badly that three hours later his face was still bleeding,” Chen said,

The Washington Post’s Keith Richburg reported a tense atmosphere around Chen’s home village of Dongshigu:

“I don’t dare go over there,” one woman said, pointing across the cornfields toward the bridge that separates her village from Chen’s. “They don’t have guns, they use sticks. If you look like an outsider, like you’re not from the village, they beat you ….”

Interviews conducted in Xishigu, the nearby village, revealed a climate of fear. “We’re all scared,” said one young man, a farmer in his mid-30s with a young daughter. “They might come and arrest us.”

A 56-year-old man who gave his surname as Wang said Chen’s many relatives in the area are all under strict watch, including those not under house arrest. “Even if his family members are allowed to go out, they are followed by those thugs,” the man said.

Reprisals have not been restricted to Dongshigu and its immediate surroundings. Richburg described being chased from the village by vehicles bearing license plates from elsewhere in Shandong province (and one with no plates at all), while other incidents have taken place still further afield: David Bandurski at China Media Project reported a number of apparently related weibo account suspensions while, according to Reuters, one lawyer who had volunteered to represent Chen Kegui had his license suspended in Guangdong:

Chen Wuquan, a lawyer based in the southern province of Guangdong, told Reuters the Guangzhou Lawyers’ Association had confiscated his license “temporarily” last week during a standard annual renewal. The lawyer Chen is not related to the Chen family from Shandong.

The association told him it could not renew his license because it had to deal with a complaint about an article he had written about the Chinese legal system.

“It must be related (to the nephew’s case),” Chen Wuquan said. “Because this kind of complaint should be processed quickly. It’s not possible that they would have to confiscate my license and not allow me to handle new cases.”

Despite this, Chen Guangcheng himself has continued to draw a line between the actions of the local and central governments. Some of the detentions elsewhere in China do appear to have been much much less harsh than those in Dongshigu: escape participant He Peirong, for example, described her interrogators as “very polite”, and said that they watched the prison break film ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ together. In contrast with his warnings of local authorities’ “crazed” vengeance, and despite a lack of evident progress in his application for travel documents and permission, Chen told Voice of America that he was “very happy” with the central government’s handling of the case. He had faith, he said, in their assurances of an investigation into the local authorities’ actions.

“To the Chinese government, I am very happy with the cool-headedness and restraint with which they’ve handled this case,” he said. “I hope the Chinese government, especially the central government, can continue to take steps towards further emancipating their minds, deepen reforms, and better address social injustices ….”

The activist told VOA he last spoke with Chinese authorities on Monday, and that they reaffirmed a pledge to investigate what he called the “illegal happenings” in Shandong.

“The important thing is that they will handle the case publically according to Chinese law – they expressed this very clearly. But they haven’t clearly said when this will begin,” he said.

Whether Chen’s professed faith in the central government is sincere or simply pragmatic, it gives Beijing room to co-operate without appearing to capitulate. The theme of officials abusing power behind a benevolent emperor’s back is traditional; it is found, for example, in the 14th Century classic The Water Margin, whose later chapters describe the outlaws’ amnesty and subsequent adventures as the emperor’s loyal soldiers. But The Economist dismisses this scheme as a poor reflection of the current reality:

Like many Chinese, Mr Chen portrays his own struggle as part of a wider gulf between an overwhelmed central government and maverick local authorities. After his escape, in a videotaped message, he implored the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, to investigate abuses in Linyi. Speaking from his hospital bed in Beijing, where he is recuperating from a broken foot suffered during his escape, Mr Chen says: “It is clear that the central government needs to turn over the Shandong soil in which the crimes of local officials have grown.” It is a modern rendering of an ancient countryside lament: “If only the emperor knew…”

But the emperor does know, and the emperor rewards. Although there has been an expansion of social and economic freedoms in many areas, under the Communist Party’s system of cadre evaluations, local officials are graded on the basis of a series of internal targets that have little to do with the rule of law. The targets are meant for internal use, but local governments have sometimes published them on websites, and foreign scholars have also seen copies. The most important measures are maintaining social stability, achieving economic growth and, in many areas, enforcing population controls. Cadres sign contracts that spell out their responsibilities. Failure to meet targets can end a cadre’s career. Fulfilling them, even if it means trampling laws to do so, can mean career advancement and financial bonuses.

At China Real Time Report, Russell Leigh Moses puts a similar point in a somewhat more optimistic context:

It would be wrong to think that Chen’s case is another example of local authorities getting away with bad behavior while the central government stayed ignorant. That’s as much a canard as the belief that Beijing’s refusal to lock Chen up represents a sudden concern about China’s image overseas. Chinese officials are aware that their reputation is under the microscope again; but most are far more concerned with being seen as hanging tough than they are with being generous. In this and so many other issues, the Party line remains the hardline ….

But there’s another scenario: There are cadres who might think that Chen Guangcheng has a point, and that the continuing harassment of him and his family are reckless acts by a Party that should know better. These officials might not agree with all of Chen’s opposition, but his complaints about cadres running amok surely resonate with those in the Party who continue to be anxious about what they perceive to be the stalled state of reform ….

Chen Guangcheng is yet another cautionary tale in the run-up to the leadership handover here later this year. The decision on his fate will not change China, but it promises to provide another clue as to where some want the Party to go.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: central government, Chen Guangcheng, detention, house arrest, interrogation, lawyers, linyi, local corruption, local officials, Shandong, sina weibo, weibo
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