“This is a case that tramples on the rule of law. It is a declaration of war against fairness and justice in the world. I absolutely cannot accept this and am very, very angry,” said Chen Guangcheng in an interview from his home in New York where he has been studying English and law. “There is no doubt that this is a kind of retaliation against me.”

[…] Since Chen Kegui disappeared into police custody in May, Yinan authorities have not officially notified his family about the prosecution nor have they let family members see him or hire their own lawyers to defend him. Lawyers were instead appointed to him, and one of them told his father Chen Guangfu about the trial only on Friday morning.

[…] “I feel very disappointed,” the father said. “I had believed that once the new generation of leaders came to power there would be improvements in the rule of law, but now it looks like the situation is still the same.”

Activist Hu Jia, a close friend of Chen Guangcheng and one of the first people he met with after his escape, described Chen Guangfu’s predicament on Twitter as the trial was underway:

陈克贵的父亲陈光福自始至终没能直接和法院工作人员交涉上，他一进入法院大门就被沂南县的警察围住，警察们明确告知大哥只能做证人，在大哥拒绝作证人的情况下，他们不让大哥旁听。现在十余名警察围着陈光福，有些曾参与过陈光诚案。他在法庭的路对面等待庭审结束的消息。 #陈克贵

— Hu Jia 胡佳 (@hu_jia) November 30, 2012

Chen Kegui’s father, Chen Guangfu, has at no point been able to make direct representations to the courthouse staff: as soon as he set foot through the door, he was surrounded by Yinan county police who bluntly informed him that he could only be present [if he testified] as a witness, and that if he refused they would not let him attend the trial. Now ten or so policemen are surrounding him, some of whom previously took part in Chen Guangcheng’s case. He’s waiting across the road from the courthouse for word of the hearing’s result.

11月30日，光福大哥会是最难受的人。上午主持祭奠父亲，然后马不停蹄赶到法院，想要见到身处牢狱别离218天的儿子。但却只能见证儿子被枉法审判。

— Hu Jia 胡佳 (@hu_jia) November 30, 2012

Chen Guangfu may be the unhappiest person of all today. In the morning, he directed the memorial ceremony for his father; afterwards, he immediately dashed to the courthouse, hoping to see in person the son who’s been away in prison for 218 days. But in the end he could only witness his son’s twisted trial.

Chen explained to The Guardian that “I hoped they would tell me early so that I could prepare, but since they didn’t, there is nothing I can do. I have not heard from my son, and the lawyers appointed by government didn’t tell me anything.” Following the trial, The Guardian’s Tania Branigan reported reactions from the family’s preferred lawyers:

Chen Wuquan, who was hired by Chen Kegui’s family to defend him but rejected by the court, said: “I can’t accept the result. Chen Kegui is not guilty at all. His behaviour was legitimate self-defence, not the crime of intentional injury. From a legal perspective, the result is unacceptable.”

[…] Teng Biao, another lawyer rejected by the court, said holding the case at such short notice ensured that they had no time to reach Yinan to help the family with legal advice.

Teng added that the defendant’s relatives had not seen him since his detention, noting: “No one has a clue about his condition.”

Human rights organisations have given scathing assessments of the trial. From Amnesty International’s Roseann Rife and Human Rights Watch’s Sophie Richardson, respectively:

“Chen Kegui was today tried by the same court that in 2006 sentenced his uncle Chen Guangcheng to prison on trumped up charges. The family has since suffered a catalogue of abuse at the hands of local authorities which central authorities have failed to investigate despite promises to the contrary.

“The sentence is appalling. It is clear that Chen Kegui’s trial was not fair. We are concerned that sentencing him to imprisonment for something that many consider self defence is nothing more than retaliation for his uncle’s escape.”

“Prosecuting Chen Guangcheng’s nephew was a test of China’s respect for the rule of law, and both the nephew, Chen Kegui, and the rule of law lost [….] This case bore the same disturbing hallmarks as Chen Guangcheng’s persecution – incommunicado detention, denial of lawyers of his choice, and a politicized and closed trial.”

[…] “Chen Kegui’s case not only violated Chinese and international legal standards, it also suggests that the new leadership in Beijing can’t or won’t follow through on commitments to investigate local officials implicated in wrongdoing and egregious human rights abuses [….] And that in turn is a worrying indication of what lies ahead.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Amnesty International, Chen Guangcheng, chen kegui, Hu Jia, human rights watch, lawyers, Teng Biao, trials
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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, South China Sea, Teng Biao, Tiananmen, U.S. relations, wang dan
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• Chaoyang Hospital (朝阳医院)
• left of his own volition (自行离开)
• Gary Locke + hospital (骆家辉+医院)
• US + embassy (美+大使)
• Guangcheng (光cheng)
• guangcheng (guang诚)

The following terms are still blocked after a re-test:

• political asylum (政治庇护)
• Teng Biao (滕彪): Chen Guangcheng’s lawyer

For other censored terms related to Chen Guangcheng, see our posts from April 27-28 and May 2.

Note: All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search. CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, filtered keywords, Gary Locke, Sensitive Words Series, sina weibo, Teng Biao, weibo
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Chen’s call came into the iPhone of friend and fellow activist Bob Fu during the middle of the hearing of the Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC), chaired by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ). Fu and Smith ran out of the hearing room to take the call and returned minutes later to put Chen on speakerphone so that he could address the audience.

“I want to make the request to have my freedom of travel guaranteed,” Chen said in Chinese, with Fu translating.

Chen said he wants to come to the United States for a period of rest because he has not had any rest in 10 years.

“I want to meet with Secretary Clinton,” Chen said. “I also want to thank her face to face.”

According to the terms of his departure from the US embassy in Beijing on Wednesday, Chen was to be allowed to remain with his family in China, where he would study law at a university of his choice, away from his former captors in Shandong, at the expense of the Chinese government and under the watchful gaze of the US. But once outside the shelter of the embassy, he decided that this would be impossible. From The Washington Post:

Blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng on Thursday began a second night isolated in a central Beijing hospital, as police and security guards barred U.S. diplomats, journalists and Chen supporters from seeing him, and as the activist told various news outlets that he now wants to leave China with his family for asylum in the United States.

In an interview early Friday with The Washington Post, Chen clarified that he wants to go to the United States only temporarily and insists on the freedom to return to China. He said he left the U.S. Embassy on Wednesday of his own free will, but he charged that the Chinese government is reneging on promises to U.S. officials to fully restore his freedom.

“The U.S. Embassy helped me a lot,” Chen said. “But I don’t think the Chinese side is obeying the agreement well.”

U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke said Thursday that “it’s apparent now that he’s had a change of heart” and wants to go to the United States. Chen had previously insisted that he wanted to remain in China, U.S. officials said. In an interview broadcast on CNN, Locke said U.S. diplomats spoke twice with Chen by telephone Thursday and met in person with his wife, Yuan Weijing. He said the United States was now assessing how best to assist Chen.

See also a video interview with Chen from Reuters, via The Guardian, and Louisa Lim’s report for NPR.

Chen’s tone towards the US has softened since a series of telephone interviews on Wednesday, for example with CNN’s Steven Jiang:

Q: U.S. officials said you looked optimistic when you walked out of the embassy, what happened?

A: At the time I didn’t have a lot of information. I wasn’t allowed to call my friends from inside the embassy. I couldn’t keep up with news so I didn’t know a lot of things that were happening.

Q: What prompted your change of heart?

A: The embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me in the hospital. But this afternoon as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone ….

Q: Do you feel you were lied to by the embassy?

A: I feel a little like that.

Q: What has this ordeal taught you?

A: I feel everyone focuses too much on their self-interest at the expense of their credibility.

The earlier sense of betrayal may have been in part a product of Chen’s exhausted and emotionally strained state, evident in another interview with Newsweek’s Melinda Liu. Liu described his family’s isolation in the heavily guarded hospital, their difficulty in obtaining food, and the psychological toll that recent events had clearly taken:

I’ve known Chen Guangcheng for more than a decade—he’s been through intimidation, beatings, jail, and extralegal house arrest—but through it all I never sensed he was scared. Now he’s scared. Chen, whose case has escalated into a bilateral crisis that threatens to dominate Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Beijing this week, was weeping as he talked to me over the phone from his hospital bed.

Speaking to Liu, Chen appeared to contradict his earlier statement—stringently denied by US officials—that he had been told his wife would be beaten to death if he did not leave the embassy. But as others including Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth agreed, there was a clear implicit threat in the fact that she would otherwise be sent back to Shandong. From The Daily Beast, again:

He told me there was no explicit threat that she would be submitted to physical violence, “but nobody had to say it, I know what we’ve experienced all these years back in Shandong. Our home was surrounded by guards, lots of guards. Our friends weren’t allowed to visit. If we tried to go out we’d be beaten, often with clubs.” Security personnel had even escorted his young daughter to and from school; Chen and his wife hadn’t seen their son for two years before their reunion at the hospital.

While Chen had hoped to continue his activism in China, overriding concern for his newly reunited family spurred his decision to try to leave. From Alexa Oleson at The Associated Press:

Chen Guangcheng’s sudden change of heart to leave China after insisting for days he wanted to stay has caught his American supporters off guard. But his reason was simple: His family’s safety came first.

Reliant on relatives to be his eyes on the world, Chen and his family share a bond strengthened by years of enforced isolation and a shared fight against vengeful local officials. His son was taken from him two years ago. His daughter has been harassed, his wife beaten, his mother followed by guards as she tilled their fields ….

Photos of the reunion released Thursday by the U.S. show Chen in a wheelchair in a bright hospital hallway smiling warmly as he greeted his wife and two children. His 6-year-old daughter, Kesi, wore pigtails and his son of about 10, Kerui, was dressed in a T-shirt and sweat pants. In a second shot, Kerui rested a tentative hand on his father’s wheelchair.

The moment marked the first time in two years that the boy had seen his father, diplomats said.

Chen’s immediate family are not the only ones at risk, however, as lawyer Teng Biao rather forcefully pointed out in a recorded phone conversation. From Kenneth Tan’s translated transcript at Shanghaiist:

Teng Biao: I heard one of the guards watching over you was detained, the one that helped you escape. Is this true?

Chen Guangcheng: Nobody helped me escape. I escaped by myself.

TB: Have you heard about Pearl [Nanjing activist who helped Chen escape]?

CGC: No, but I heard she has disappeared.

TB: Yes, she has disappeared. Guo Yushan has also been released but he’s also in danger. Without a doubt, they are going to sort all you guys out later. They also promised in [1989] they would not punish anyone, but look what happened next – how many people did they shoot?

According to unconfirmed reports online, Pearl, or He Peirong, was back home but under house arrest on Wednesday; her car, covered with dust, was apparently found abandoned in her home city of Nanjing. In an ominous sign of further reprisals against Chen’s friends and supporters, Zeng Jinyan was also placed under house arrest on Thursday:

Activist Zeng Jinyan was taking her young daughter to school on Thursday morning when public security agents who had been following her in a black car informed her she wouldn’t be allowed to leave her home, she said in a post on her Twitter account.

“We will do our utmost to see to it that your daughter is picked up and dropped off and do our utmost to see to your daily needs. You can’t go out for these next few days,” she quoted the agents as saying.

Ms. Zeng had been among the first to cast doubt on the deal for Mr. Chen’s release the previous night, saying on Twitter that Mr. Chen and his wife had told her Mr. Chen was willing to leave China with his family but left the embassy out of fear for his family’s safety. Ms. Zeng wasn’t answering her phone Thursday afternoon.

Teng Biao has also cut off contact with the media. But journalists faced other problems as the authorities celebrated World Press Freedom Day in their own distinctive way. The BBC’s global news head Peter Horrocks complained that its own report on the obstruction of reporters was blocked:

Horrocks said the BBC was targeted over its coverage of Guangcheng, the blind Chinese activist who escaped house arrest and fled to the US embassy in Beijing.

“Today is World Press Freedom Day and during recent days we have learnt that BBC World News, our 24/7 international news channel, has been jammed by Chinese authorities during stories they regard as sensitive,” said Horrocks in a blogpost on the BBC’s website.

“This deliberate electronic interference of the channel’s distribution signal is just the latest in a long line of examples to block our impartial news and prevent it reaching audiences.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists provides more information on the obstruction of reporters on the case:

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China circulated an email to members Thursday, warning them that “reporters have had their press cards confiscated (hopefully just temporarily) and have been escorted from the premises at Chaoyang Hospital.” Chen was being treated at the hospital on Wednesday for injuries he sustained during his dramatic flight from extrajudicial house arrest to the U.S. embassy last week, according to international news reports. The story is censored in China.

In two separate incidents, men in plainclothes harassed and threatened media crews from two outlets who were attempting to visit Chen’s home on Tuesday and Wednesday, the news outlets reported. Stephen Jiang, an editor for CNN in Beijing, described his encounter on the CNN website, saying that “a half-dozen burly men stood guard,” which led to scuffling and a cameraman’s equipment being seized. The reporting trip was intended to “find Chen’s family—but couldn’t get close,” Jiang reported.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: BBC, Chen Guangcheng, Gary Locke, Hillary Clinton, journalists, Teng Biao, United States
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“They are all free citizens,” Hu quoted the police officers as saying. “For them to come to Beijing and so on, there is nothing illegal about it. They are free to do so. They did not do anything wrong, they have no legal trouble. We just want to understand the situation and verify it ….”

The police acknowledgment is an indication that Chen’s troubles with the authorities have primarily been about revenge by local leaders, who had seemed especially bitter and personal in their mistreatment of Chen ….

But the central government has never shown much inclination to stop the authorities in Shandong province’s Linyi city, which oversees Chen’s village of Dongshigu. The Chinese government has a long history of ignoring its own laws.

Guo Yushan, another activist involved in Chen’s escape, told The Wall Street Journal that “they asked every question they could about Chen Guangcheng and wanted every detail about his escape” during the 50 hours he was detained in Beijing, and that his interrogation was “civilised”. (Guo has since been ordered not to talk to foreign media.) Of those detained outside Linyi, He Peirong—profiled by Oiwan Lam at Global Voices—remains missing after being taken from her home in Nanjing on Friday.

In Linyi’s Dongshigu village, meanwhile, the substantial security machinery assembled to guard Chen has been at work rounding up members of his family instead. From Tania Branigan at The Guardian:

On Monday, the European Union urged China to avoid harassing the activist’s family and associates. But many are already in the hands of furious officials; Chen Kegui fled after lashing out with a knife at men who had broken into his home and detained his father. Shortly afterwards, two police officers marched his mother away from the hospital where she was caring for his sick child. Chen Kegui’s wife is now too frightened to reveal her location.

“She’s afraid she will be next and the whole family will be taken away. She’s terrified,” said lawyer Liu Weiguo, whom she hired before she left.

Liu, possibly under pressure from the authorities, recruited a band of other lawyers who have volunteered to aid Chen Kegui. From David Pierson at The Los Angeles Times:

“Shandong policemen are famous for violating the law,” said Liang Xiaojun, one of the volunteers and a regular defender of activists. “I don’t know if Keguis rights will be protected, which is why we’re getting together. We are concerned about the case and we want to help. We’re hoping we can create enough publicity to pressure the relevant parties.”

Another volunteer lawyer, Teng Biao, said Chen Kegui’s whereabouts are still unknown. It is also unclear whether he was in the hands of police or local thugs (human rights activists argue that there’s often not much difference).

Despite his own reported wishes and the alleged acknowledgement of his innocence, it may be impossible for Chen to remain in China. From Josh Chin at The Wall Street Journal:

In fleeing and seeking U.S. protection, analysts say, Mr. Chen has elevated his case, taking what had been home confinement of Mr. Chen under local authorities and turning it into a national issue, which makes it more difficult to find a resolution that lets him remain in China—something activists say he prefers to safe passage out of the country.

“What he’s done almost ensures that he has to leave,” said Joshua Rosenzweig, a human-rights researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, noting that Beijing is unlikely to want to keep around such a high-profile critic of the country’s legal system. “It would be very difficult to imagine any other end game to this ….”

U.S.-based activist Bob Fu on Monday raised the possibility that the U.S. and China would come to a “face-saving” arrangement that would allow Mr. Chen and his family to travel to the U.S., not as asylum seekers, but under the pretext of seeking medical attention. Mr. Fu is the founder of Christian human rights group China Aid, which he says facilitated Mr. Chen’s escape.

(Fu, who says he learned of Chen’s escape three days before the guards themselves and has been a major conduit of information since the news went public, is also the subject of an article at MSNBC, which calls him “God’s double agent“.)

Kellie Currie, a fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, suggested a possible compromise to The Diplomat’s Jason Miks:

“One possible face-saving solution for everyone would be for Beijing to allow him and his family to lawfully immigrate to Hong Kong. He would arguably be much safer there, away from the reach of the horrible Linyi officials who have been tormenting his family, and would be able to attend law school, have access to international media, diplomats, etc., while technically remaining on Chinese soil and able to continue his work in support of the rule of law in China.

“If Chen would agree to this, it would probably be the best possible outcome for all the parties involved.”

If not, exile to the US would at least avoid what the Brookings Institution’s Kenneth Lieberthal described to NPR as “the worst possible outcome“: for Chen to remain trapped in the US embassy in Beijing for months or years, with his presence there “a long-term major irritant in our bilateral relationship”. This prospect echoes the 13 months that physicist Fang Lizhi—who died last month—spent with his wife Li Shuxian in a windowless embassy basement following the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident. At The New York Review of Books, Perry Link recalled his own part in Fang’s “temporary refuge”:

The eventual solution of the Fang case was to negotiate Fang’s and Li’s exile: As Fang later wrote in The New York Review, Deng Xiaoping’s key demand in the negotiations was that the US lift its economic sanctions on China—a condition the US was unwilling to meet. But in June 1990, the Japanese government promised to resume loan programs to China, and with that Deng agreed to release Fang and Li as part of the package. The Chinese government demanded in addition that Fang agree to “no anti-China activity” after his release. Fang accepted this demand, but repeatedly made it clear that to criticize China’s ruling regime was hardly “anti-China.” He persisted with his criticisms, which he saw as supportive of China.

Today, for Chen Guangcheng, the two governments might agree that exile is the least awkward solution from their points of view, but Chen may not accept it. Chinese dissidents have learned over the past two decades that exile leads to a sharp decline in a person’s ability to make a difference inside China. Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who is now in his third year of an eleven-year prison sentence for “subversion,” made it clear after his arrest that he would not accept exile as an alternative to prison. From what friends of Chen in Beijing have been saying in recent days, it seems that Chen is taking a similar position.

Link gave further details of Fang and Li’s stay at the embassy to The Guardian’s Tania Branigan:

“It had comfortable furniture and food and so on, but in terms of personal freedom it was no better than a prison.

“Their son Fang Zhe went in with them, but about four days later left because he couldn’t stand it.”

In an essay, Fang, who died last month, wrote: “All the windows were nailed shut by planks and it was isolated from outside. The garbage would be put into the medical briefcase and carried out by the resident doctor for processing. The food was purchased by the nurse.”

Regardless of Chen’s eventual destination, the irritant factor looks set to persist through this week’s Strategic and Economic Dialogue, for which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Treasury counterpart Timothy Geithner have travelled to Beijing. From NPR:

This time around, human rights issues will certainly “interfere” with Clinton’s agenda. And they should, says Rep. Chris Smith, a Republican of New Jersey.

“My hope is that this week will be a game-changer for the administration, which has been very weak and enabling of the Chinese dictatorship,” Smith says. “You know, hope springs eternal — this is the week to make a difference and be very strong with Chen Guangcheng ….”

The Obama administration has raised concerns about Chen’s harsh treatment under house arrest in the past. Administration officials wouldn’t comment Monday directly on Chen’s case. Clinton would only say she’s working on — as she puts it — a “constructive relationship” with China.

One former senior diplomat defended the lack of specific comment, telling Reuters that “the quieter we are officially, the better the outcome likely will be“. But both Clinton and Obama have stressed that human rights have a central place in their negotiations with China. From Reuters, via The Guardian:

Global Times took a moment to enjoy the Americans’ dilemma, and the fact that Chen is now at least partly someone else’s problem.

In the Western media, Chen is a hot potato for Chinese authorities. Now he is making Washington uncomfortable. Chen, unlike other dissidents who made abstract human rights goals in China, has many detailed complaints about the country’s grass-roots governance. He travelled to the US embassy from Linyi, Shandong, and now these problems have entered the US sphere of import.

All countries are plagued by various public complaints. Chinese petitioners are motivated by various incentives. If petitioners’ requests are not met by domestic authorities and turn to the US embassy, this is not only embarrassing to China but also puts the US in an awkward position.

The US embassy would have no interest in turning itself into a petition office receiving Chinese complaints. It is easier just preaching universal values to the Chinese public, and occasionally, helping a few exemplary cases that best illustrate US intentions. It is never willing to involve itself in too many detailed disputes in Chinese society.

The editorial is an exceptional break in the blanket of silence thrown over China’s official and, as far as possible, social media. From China Media Project, on Saturday:

CMP was able to find no coverage of Chen Guangcheng whatsoever in traditional media, and so far (as of 6pm today) there has been no official word from official outlets like Xinhua News Agency.

Following a flurry of discussion of Chen Guangcheng on Chinese social media Friday, we see far more robust controls today. Nearly all possible searches have been blocked, and even the Chinese word for “blind person”, or mang’ren (盲人) — Chen Guangcheng lost his sight during his early childhood — turns up the familiar warning that: “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, these search results cannot be shown ….”

But we did happen across this post by Chinese professor Zhu Dake (朱大可), who wrote cryptically:

[The Story of the Mole] Once upon a time there was a mole who was surrounded by a pack of wolves, but with the help of some mice he managed to escape. The wolves were furious. The mole’s older and younger brothers, his mother and his baby still lived in the burrow. They became the hostages of the wolves. The escaped mole hid in the forest and called out to the lion, but the lion could not hear his fragile voice. The mice in the walls and the mice in the field all passed along the welcome news, but they couldn’t decide whether the [mole's] escape was a victory, or whether it was just the beginning of more hardship.

Moles, wolves and lions are now all on a list of censored terms compiled by the AP: see also two recent instalments of CDT’s own Sensitive Words series. Other entries include “Blind Man”, “A Bing” (a blind musician), “Shawshank Redemption”, and many other code words pressed into service by netizens trying to stay ahead of the censors. Others have joined foreign supporters on Twitter, from where Al Jazeera’s The Stream compiled a roundup of reactions and rumours.

At NPR, Louisa Lim contrasted the attempted blackout with authorities’ approach to the recent Bo Xilai scandal(s), on which speculation was allowed to run relatively wild.

But in the case of Chen, the escaped lawyer, the strategy has been completely different. The censorship machine has tried to deny his existence rather than allow his demonization. That could be because sensitive negotiations with the U.S. about his fate are ongoing.

Charlie Custer of the translation website ChinaGeeks.org says another factor could be that his case is more potent.

“The whole Bo Xilai thing is sort of like watching an opera or watching a movie. It’s very entertaining and very interesting, but it doesn’t cause the average person to think, ‘Wow, that could happen to me,’ ” Custer says. “Chen Guangcheng comes from a rural, poor background, so he strikes a chord with a lot of people. Then seeing his family — these people who are completely innocent of anything — be arrested and held without trial or charges, that does resonate with a lot of people.”

See also ‘Activist’s Escape Tests Chinese & US Governments‘ at CDT, on the political implications of Chen’s escape within China and across the Pacific; Steven Colbert’s account of the episode, in which he comments that “apparently losing your sight doesn’t just make your ears better: it makes your balls bigger”; and an English-subtitled version of Chen’s video message.

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Post tags: asylum, Barack Obama, Bo Xilai, Chen Guangcheng, Christopher Smith, Deng Xiaoping, EU, exiles, Fang Lizhi, Global Times, Hillary Clinton, Hong Kong, Hu Jia, Internet censorship, linyi, Liu Xiaobo, perry link, police, refugees, Shandong, sina weibo, social media, Teng Biao, Tiananmen Square, Timothy Geithner, United States
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If you are interested in participating in this project by submitting and/or translating terms, please contact the CDT editors at CDT [at] chinadigitaltimes [dot] net.

活埋 (huó mái): buried alive

When the Chinese government allowed dissident and author Yu Jie to leave the country they were hoping to silence his voice. Little did they know, just weeks after he entered the United States, one of Yu Jie’s statements would be dubbed the “first Internet catchphrase of 2012.”

Yu Jie wrote that the night before Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, he was wrestled into a car and taken to an unknown location where he was stripped naked, kicked and had his fingers bent back one-by-one. After that, the Domestic Security Department agent in charge made the following threat：

“If the order comes from above, within half an hour we can dig a pit and bury you alive. No one on earth would know… As far as we can tell, there are no more than 200 intellectuals in the country who oppose the Communist Party and are influential. If the central authorities think that their rule is facing a crisis, they can capture them all in one night and bury them alive.”

Other dissidents including Jiang Tianyong, Teng Biao, Liu Shihui, Zhang Lin and Liu Dejun have also reported being threatened by the Domestic Security Department that they could be buried alive.

The phrase “buried alive” quickly began to make the rounds on the Internet. One microblog user wrote, “They say in the event of a crisis they’ll bury 200 influential intellectuals. What a tragedy. Even when it comes to being buried alive, I don’t qualify.” A Ding, an online writer, included the phrase in his Chinese New Year Greeting: “Happy New Year–hope you make it onto the bury-alive list!”

Yu Jie is perhaps best well known for authoring the book, China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: buried alive, bury alive, Jiang Tianyong, Liu Dejun, Liu Shihui, Liu Xiaobo, meme, Teng Biao, word of the week, yu jie, zhang lin
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The oath requires lawyers to “pledge to faithfully fulfill the sacred mission of a legal worker under the socialist system with Chinese characteristics.” It also demands that they “be loyal to the motherland, loyal to the people, uphold the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the socialist system.”

Lawyer Pu Zhiqiang tells VOA’s Mandarin service that confusion has long surrounded directives from the Communist Party’s Politics and Law Committee.

“For instance, we often face the problem of whether the Communist Party’s Politics and Law Committee represents the Party when it gives directions in regard to public security, procuratorial and legal work. If so, we as lawyers are indeed interfered with in our legal activities.”

Chinese authorities in recent years have stepped up pressure on activist lawyers who represent clients in some of the country’s most politically sensitive rights cases.

On his blog, Siweiluozi has posted a translation of the full oath, posted in the Legal Daily:

I volunteer to become a practicing lawyer of the People’s Republic of China and promise to faithfully perform the sacred duties of a socialist-with-Chinese-characteristics legal worker (中国特色社会主义法律工作者); to be faithful to the motherland and the people; to uphold the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the socialist system; to safeguard the dignity of the constitution and the law; to practice on behalf of the people; to be diligent, professional honest, and corruption-free; to protect the legitimate rights and interests of clients, the correct implementation of the law, and social fairness and justice; and diligently strive for the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics!

Read more about lawyers in China, including those who actively defend politically sensitive cases, such as Teng Biao and Pu Zhiqiang, via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: defending rights, lawyers, legal system, pu zhiqiang, Teng Biao
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Reuters reported last week that, faced with intransigent officials and empty guarantees of safe passage in Linyi, some of Chen’s would-be visitors have taken their complaints to Beijing:

Some of the supporters were beaten by dozens of men in plain clothes while trying to visit Chen on Sunday, and their complaints were later ignored by the local police, said Mao Hengfeng, a petitioner from Shanghai.

She said the petitioners then went to Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security, but it was not clear whether officials accepted their petition expressing concerns about Chen’s treatment.

“We were roughed up and pushed around, and some of us were hurt, but the police didn’t lift a finger and ignored our complaints,” Mao told Reuters about the weekend incident in Linyi.

“Now we want the Ministry of Public Security to do something about Linyi — it’s a place without any law or rights.”

But Jerome Cohen, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed based on his Nov. 1 testimony to the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, wrote that the image of the Linyi government as a rogue, independent actor is a misconception. While limited aspects of the story may indeed be cases of local-vs-national government, he argues, the situation as a whole is part of a broader program in which Beijing is entirely complicit.

There are three myths about Mr. Chen’s plight that must be dispelled. One is that such cases of persecution and abuse of lawyers and legal activists are rare in China, and only occur when a few heroic dissidents openly invoke the law to confront injustice rather than rely less confrontational methods ….

A second myth is that Mr. Chen’s recent suffering is merely another example of local government run amok, neither approved nor condoned by the central government. Many attacks on lawyers are indeed local in origin, and Mr. Chen’s case started out that way in 2005 when local authorities first sent thugs to illegally confine him and his family at home. However, the case soon came to the attention of national leaders. After representatives of the Ministry of Public Security reportedly met with local officials to discuss the situation, the authorities launched a criminal prosecution against Mr. Chen, a more conventional type of repression.

A third myth is that there must be some purported legal justification for the suffering that the Chen household has endured since his release from prison last year. Governments, even the Chinese government, normally like to maintain some veneer of plausible legitimacy for their misconduct, however thin it might be. Yet no such justification has come to my knowledge in this case, which seems to have exceeded the bounds of police ingenuity.

See also Andy Yee’s post on Chen’s house arrest as a facet of China’s stability maintenance machinery at Global Voices Online, a slightly different adaptation of Cohen’s testimony at The New York Review of Books, and Human Rights in China Executive Director Sharon Hom’s testimony to the same Congressional-Executive Commission:

It is important to note that Chen Guangcheng’s situation reflects the fate of countless other human rights defenders in China subject to extra-legal measures, including being restrained under constant surveillance within closed premises – in their homes, temporary residences such as boarding houses or hotels (also known as “black jails”), or other undisclosed locations – where they are not permitted to leave. As distinguished from formal sentences of imprisonment, in which authorities officially charge and detain individuals pursuant to cited criminal laws and procedures, Chinese government officials have articulated no specific legal basis for these detentions. As a result, extra-judicially detained rights defenders are left entirely outside the protection of the law, without any recourse to procedures to challenge their detention, under circumstances that could permit serious rights violations – including the use of torture or other ill-treatment.

The commission’s chairman, Representative Chris Smith, announced his intention to visit Chen if possible, and to pursue other avenues if not. From the AFP:

“Enough is enough. The cruelty and extreme violence against Chen and his family brings dishonor to the government of China and must end,” said Representative Chris Smith, chairman of the Congressional Executive Commission on China.

Smith, a Republican from New Jersey who is active on human rights issues, said he would shortly ask China to allow a US congressional delegation to travel to Chen’s village of Dongshigu in eastern Shandong province.

“I am trying to put together a trip to go there and go to his house. We’re already checking flights,” Smith told AFP after the hearing, saying that the lawmakers “desperately hope” that Chen is still alive.

Even if China does not allow the trip, Smith said that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or the US ambassador to China, Gary Locke, should raise the case at the highest levels.

Locke told GlobalPost last Friday that he had actually already expressed his concerns:

“We are very concerned about his treatment and, for instance, the reports his daughter was not allowed to go to school. Although he’s been freed, he is still under severe restrictions on his movements,” Locke told GlobalPost in a private interview Friday. He said the Chinese government has not yet responded to the letter he sent in September ….

Since Locke sent the letter, Chen’s 6-year-old daughter has been allowed to leave her home to attend school, under guard.

The ambassador, who arrived in Beijing in August, added his voice to the chorus calling for China to ease its extreme treatment of the self-taught lawyer, who is known for exposing forced abortions in his hometown in Shandong province.

A new report from the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, ‘Legal Advocacy and the 2011 Crackdown in China: Adversity, Repression, and Resilience‘ (PDF) describes earlier interference with efforts to help Chen (pp. 9-10):

On February 16, 2011, a group of activists and lawyers gathered over lunch to strategize about how to come to the aid of Chen Guangcheng, a blind, self-taught legal activist facing an extraordinary level of government abuse. A week earlier, on February 9, Chen and his wife Yuan Weijing publicly released a series of videos describing the 24-hour surveillance and house imprisonment he and his family had been subjected to since his release from prison on September 9, 2010. There was absolutely no legal basis for these measures or the ongoing deprivation of liberty of Chen and his family. The following day, Chen and his wife were beaten in their home in retribution for releasing the videos online. (For more details on Chen’s case, see Box B. [p. 23])

Authorities barred seven individuals from leaving their homes to attend the February 16 meeting, including Li Xiongbing, Li Heping, and Xu Zhiyong, three lawyers whom authorities would proceed to illegally detain at various times in the following months. Another person prevented from attending the meeting, Internet activist and rights defender Wang Lihong, was detained sometime before March 26 and has since been convicted for “assembling a crowd to disturb social order” and sentenced to nine months imprisonment. The February 16 meeting mirrored other gatherings held during the period of Chen’s pre-trial detention in 2006, making Chen’s case notable because it inspired lawyers, human rights defenders, and activists to coalesce as a community in his support.

Enforced disappearance is defined under international law as the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty of a person either by state agents or with official support, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the detention or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person. Chinese authorities proceeded to employ this illegal measure against many of the lawyers who managed to attend the meeting. Police seized lawyers Jiang Tianyong and Tang Jitian that afternoon. Tang was disappeared for three weeks, while Jiang was interrogated and beaten before being released in the evening, only to be disappeared for 2 months from February 19 to April 19. Beijing-based rights lawyer and university lecturer Teng Biao was disappeared for 69 days between February 19 and April 29.

The Economist cited Chen’s would-be visitors as a key demonstration of the Internet’s potential for coordinating activism in China:

The use of the internet to mobilise people to visit Mr Chen has rattled officials far beyond Shandong province. It is the first time in China that activists have made such a persistent effort to show up in solidarity with someone under house arrest. It also coincides with attempts to use weibo, or microblogs, to gain support for independent candidates in elections to low-level “people’s congresses” that have been taking place around the country. Though the congresses have little power, and it is very difficult for truly independent candidates to stand, the polls still make the Communist Party nervous.

Activists know they have little chance of meeting Mr Chen, whose house is floodlit at night and cut off from mobile-phone networks. But there have been numerous quixotic forays. On October 14th a number of disabled men and women from neighbouring Anhui province were turned away. On October 30th, says Human Rights in China, an NGO based in New York, a group of 37 people who made the attempt to get through was attacked by around 100 thugs.

The Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon sees Chen’s predicament as akin to the death of Yueyue and the authorities’ pursuit of Ai Weiwei in reflecting an underbelly sometimes concealed by the bright plumage of China’s economic hi-scores and scientific leaps.

His neighbours stand aside and let it happen. “These people must have known Chen Guangcheng. They might have even been his student, friends, or relatives. But in this place, at this time, no one cared about what was happening to him. These villagers treated him as if he were a stranger, or an enemy. All these villagers had gotten together to gang up against one blind man,” writer Murong Xuecun wondered after he and four friends were roughed up and prevented from seeing Mr. Chen ….

The Communist Party’s supporters will say that dissidents like Mr. Ai and Mr. Chen don’t matter in the big scheme of things. The argument goes that the persecution of these few is a small price to pay for ensuring the stability that allows the People’s Republic to get wealthier, to build a space program, and to experiment – a little – with civil society.

Reading that half of the headlines, it’s hard to argue that progress isn’t being made. But as little Yueyue’s case illustrated so vividly, the costs of that stability – the institutionalized injustice and indifference – are still being tallied.

Italy’s Post Internazionale has interviewed “Crazy Crab”, the cartoonist behind ‘Hexie Farm‘ (which was included in CDT’s recent list of search terms blocked on Sina Weibo) and the ‘Dark Glasses. Portrait‘ project in support of Chen Guangcheng:

The CCP has a long history of using art as a powerful propaganda tool. However, artists can also use art to protest against the one party dictatorship and censorship. If an art work shocks the audience, give them a new perspective and let them think in a different way, then it can help to change the system gradually …. One month ago, I started ‘Dark glasses. Portrait’ campaign to support a blind lawyer, Mr. Chen Guangcheng, who is under house arrest in a village. I received hundreds of photos from unknown people already. Reading their emails I can feel their fear, even from people who are thousands kilometers away from China (in Europe or the US ). But the more I read from participants’ words is still courage and strength.

See more on the Crazy Crab interview via CDT.

Meanwhile, in the Relativity Media Linyi film shoot subplot, Relativity CEO Ryan Kavanaugh was due to appear at the Asia Society’s US-China Film Summit in Los Angeles last Tuesday. He cancelled at the last minute, however, possibly calculating that continued celebration of his firm’s valuable business relationships in China might be derailed by awkward questions about his partners’ other activities. The Washington Post, though, talked to a Linyi official whose enthusiasm for the city’s cinematic prospects remained undented:

In a telephone interview, Su Guiyou, director of the Linyi Propaganda Department’s Culture Industry Office, said that the district hoped to become a center for movie-making and that the American comedy “will be a good chance to publicize Linyi and will help make Linyi famous not only in China, but also the world.” The Hollywood team, he said, filmed for four days last week and shot a “dream scene” in a local quarry.

Asked about Chen and complaints about his treatment, Su said he had never heard of the activist and hung up.

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Post tags: Ai Weiwei, black jails, cartoonists, Chen Guangcheng, Christopher Smith, congress, congressional hearing, detention, Gary Locke, Hillary Clinton, house arrest, human rights conditions, illegal detentions, Jerome cohen, lawyers, Li Heping, Li Xiongbing, linyi, local government, Mao Hengfeng, Murong Xuecun, petitioners, Shandong, Tang Jitian, Teng Biao, United States, Wang Lihong, Xu Zhiyong
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Around 5 pm local time on April 29, Beijing-based human rights lawyer Li Fangping (李方平) was kidnapped by unidentified individuals outside the offices of the health rights NGO Beijing Yirenping Center, of which he is a legal advisor. Li was able to speak briefly with his wife, telling her, “I may be gone for a period of time… can’t talk more.” Further efforts to contact him have been unsuccessful, and his whereabouts are unknown.

The news of Li Fangping’s abduction comes on the heels of reports that prominent human rights lawyer Teng Biao (滕彪) was released earlier that afternoon after 70 days of enforced disappearance . Teng Biao’s wife, who confirmed his return, said she could not comment on his health or any other details of his disappearance. While the timing of Teng’s release initially seemed to signal a positive response by the Chinese government to this week’s U.S.-China human rights dialogue, the disappearance of Li shortly thereafter quickly dampened any hope that pressure on human rights activists in China might be easing. These actions raise renewed questions about the limits of international pressure on the Chinese government, as well as the effectiveness of human rights dialogues.

“In recent months, and especially during this crackdown, we have seen that torture to enforce silence is becoming a frighteningly common experience for those disappeared or detained,” said Renee Xia, CHRD’s International Director. “The Chinese authorities, in the meantime, are resorting to an old trick, the revolving-door approach—one in, one out—to create the impression that things are improving.”

Li Fangping is a prominent Beijing-based human rights lawyer who in recent years has represented a number of high-profile victims of political and religious persecution, including, among others, Chen Guangcheng, Yang Chunlin (杨春林), Hu Jia (胡佳), and Zhao Lianhai (赵连海). He has faced frequent harassment from officials, and, on December 27, 2006, was severely beaten and suffered head injuries after he and another lawyer were assaulted en route to visit Chen Guangcheng in a Shandong Prison.

See also CDT posts on Li’s involvement in issues such as Green Dam Internet filtering and tainted milk.

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Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, crackdown, detention, Hu Jia, lawyers, Li Fangping, Teng Biao, Yang Chunlin, yirenping, Zhao Lianhai
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Teng Biao returned home on Friday afternoon but was not able to speak to the media, his wife, Wang Ling, said. She declined to comment on his physical or mental well-being.

Other lawyers and activists released after similar detentions have also declined to speak to the media, possibly as a condition of their release.

China Human Rights Defenders, a Hong Kong rights advocacy group, said earlier Teng disappeared on 19 February and officers searched his home, seizing two computers, a printer, articles, books, DVDs and photos of another rights lawyer, Chen Guangcheng.

Teng, a law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, was among dozens of lawyers and activists across China who have vanished, been interrogated or detained for subversion as the Chinese government, apparently unnerved by events in the Middle East and North Africa, moved to prevent dissent.

Meanwhile, an expert on China’s role in the Korean war, who was jailed for more than a decade for spying, will be released in June after his sentence was reduced further, a human rights group said.

The intermediate court in Guangzhou cut the sentence of scholar Xu Zerong by a third, slicing five more months from his 13-year term, said the Dui Hua Foundation in San Francisco.

These developments do not appear to mark the start of an easing-up in the ongoing crackdown, however. The Chinese Human Rights Defenders network dryly noted on Twitter that the authorities seem to be operating on a “one out, one in” basis:

Human rights lawyer Li Fangping abducted in Beijing around 5pm local time by unidentified men in front of the office of Yirenping, an NGO.

See also: more on Li Fangping’s disappearance, via CDT.

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Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, crackdown, detention, lawyers, Li Fangping, Teng Biao
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“Doing this type of work, we can never be afraid of being jailed,” said Mr Teng. “But if you are in prison, you cannot do things.”

The joke is not looking so funny now. On Saturday, Mr Teng was called in to talk to the local police and as of Wednesday evening, he had still not reappeared, swallowed up somewhere in the city’s labyrinthine security bureaucracy. The police came later to his flat and took the two laptops that he spent his days crouched in front of.

“Why don’t you come in for a cup of tea?” is the euphemism that often accompanies such a police summons. Some young wits have even invented a new character that combines the symbol for tea with the similar character for interrogation. The normal routine is a few hours of questioning over, yes, some tea, followed by a rap on the knuckles.

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Post tags: activists, Chinese lawyers, Teng Biao, Yu Jianrong
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What a miracle.

When blind civil-rights activist Chen Guangcheng completed his prison term September 9, 2010, he returned home to more than 100 thugs surrounding his house. The four entrances to his village had been sealed off. A mobile phone signal-deflector had been set up in the village. There were so many thugs they crowded the village and slept in Chen’s doorway at night. They put a lock on his door to keep him from escaping in the dark. Under such surveillance, there was no chance of an outsider meeting or exchanging information with Chen. After Sept. 13, 2010, the outside world knew nothing of Chen’s circumstances.

Not long ago, citizen heroes such as Chen Yunfei and Zhen Zhu stormed the village only to be beaten back by the sentries. Zhen Zhu’s car was smashed. Glass and blood littered the ground in all directions. The visit attempt had failed.

From Dong Shigu Village to Wuyun Village, the darkness of injustice fomented.

But no one expected Chen to break through the blockage.

It’s still unclear by what means Chen covertly recorded 50 minutes of footage and delivered it to the outside. This feat proves without a doubt that the people can reach free ground via technology and the Internet. A man under tight security in a small room can deliver his message to the masses. During this 50-minute video, Chen, soaked in his own vigor, proved that no straightened circumstance can obstruct a courageous heart if the mind is free.

A glorious pen wrote this case into the annals of civil history.

This is the first time Yi Bao has posted a video.

I think every kind of offence against human rights described by Chen Guangcheng, as well as the siege on his home, makes for a huge contrast of realities for us city dwellers. But it’s by no means a contradiction. Qian Mu said that in a time of peace, the diligent Chinese people could build China into a prosperous country in 40 years. But after prosperity, whether China can guarantee human rights, whether the gains of the country aren’t earned off the backs of the people, whether fascism can be avoided – only this is the key question for China’s development. Chen’s 50-minute video proves that we are at that critical moment. Herein lies the reason behind Chen’s call to “save China.”

It’s hard to imagine how Chen risked daily peril to capture this video he delivered to citizens online. And how was it smuggled out via a chain in mortal jeopardy at every link? Not even food could be delivered to Chen under those harsh conditions. Is this not a miracle?

During the video, we see Chen quiver with passion and determination as he says: Fight them to the end.

Could it be that the democratic movement in China is lead by a blind man?

Could it be that from under such vile public rule that we still cannot regain our consciousness?

Yi Bao’s publication of this video also proves that between magnificent lies and fragility, Yi Bao chooses the truth. Between the empty-handed Chen Guangcheng and the mighty Linyi Government, Yi Bao stands with Chen. Between high walls and fragile eggs, Yi Bao will always take the egg.

While watching this video there are two scenes that tear my eyes. In one, Chen raises a shriveled bouquet of flowers. Originally, they were fresh flowers picked by lawyer Teng Biao and give to his daughter during trial. Chen kept them by his side for four long years of prison. Chen waves the dry, yellow flowers in the video, demonstrating his sincerity. Any support to Chen is a witness to good conscience. He will keep those flowers forever.

The second is Chen’s wife, Yuan Weijing, in front of the lens. She says softly, if something happens after the video is distributed, may our friends look after our two children. I understand. With the release of this wake-up call to the Chinese people, the couple prepared for the worst.

Like Qian Yunhui, Chen nearly suffered a bizarre car accident. The murder’s motorcycle spend toward Chen that night. Who would have thought he could have found his conscience just then. At the last moment, the murderer hit the brakes and quietly drove away.

Qian Yunhui used his watch to capture a short video. Chen used his effort to film 50 minutes of proof. Qian Yunhui died on the road in a “bizarre accident” for the benefit of the villagers (It’s not known whether it was an assassination or a traffic accident. The authorities called it an accident but suspicion of assassination is rife among villagers. Yet there’s not enough evidence). Just the same, Chen has resisted for the human rights of the villagers. He released a video that could bring only harm to himself. The video has caused people to worry and feel conflicted. But Chen did it courageously.

Today, I saw the video had been released on Pastor Fu Xiqiu’s website (China Aid).

Not long after Qian Yunhui released the video showing how the property rights of villagers had been exploited by officials, he was killed. And with the release of Chen Guangcheng’s video, he has also slipped into a world of danger.

To keep something from happening to Chen’s family, I think the largest possible group of people paying attention to and spreading this video – the voice of justice – is the best way of protecting him. Posting this video on your blog could reduce a degree of the danger Chen is in. Let the truth spread far and wide.

© Don Weinland for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, China AId, Qian Yunhui, Southern Weekly, Teng Biao, Yi Bao, Zhai Minglei
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A police officer shouted at me to sit; I pushed the chair over with my foot. Several officers rushed forward and twisted my arms, punched my head and choked me, and pushed me to the ground. They took me to another room. In the corridor I cried out, “I am a law teacher, I know whether or not you are violating the law.” I said this primarily to make them understand that they were dealing with someone who knew the law, to make them refrain from acting rashly and inflicting too much pain—and it was also meant for the ears of Mr. Zhang and the officers who were interrogating him.

Several police officers pushed me into a corner and one guy came up and fiercely dragged at my tie until he finally managed to pull it off, and threw it to the floor. The police officers pointed at my nose and coarsely swore at me again, and again they cried, “Do you know where you are? If we beat you, what can you do?”

After a while, a police officer came in and said that we had been detained because we had gone to Fan Yafeng’s home. One officer, who I heard addressed as Xu Ping, went from merely loudly interrogating to roaring accusations at me: “O ho, that’s how it is! In that case, you belong to the enemy! F- your mother, you went to see Fan Yafeng! That c-! In that case we don’t have to talk about legal constraints at all! And you motherf- won’t get out of here again! You traitors, you dogs! Counter-revolutionaries! The Communist Party feeds you and pays you and you still don’t acknowledge how good it is! You keep insulting the Party!… We will treat you just like an enemy!”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, defending rights, lawyers, police violence, Teng Biao
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Whereas democratic politics have already become the consensus of the people, the rule of law has been written into the constitution and forms the bedrock of the nation’s blueprint; and whereas nearly-omnipresent corruption and “special privileges” damage the rule of law; whereas building, supporting, and even defending the rule of law and changing social conduct to create belief in the rule of law requires an overwhelming number of rational citizens of undertake the cause; to those Chinese citizens searching for justice and the rule of law: resolve to mutually abide by the principles of conscience, duty, democracy, the rule of law and the concept of the “modern citizen”; protect the people’s rights and livelihoods, promote good laws and leaders. For the sake of a modern nation by the people, for the people, and of the people; for the sake of justice, love of one’s fellow man, and a happy civil society; for the sake of the future of the Chinese people under civilization and the rule of law, be willing to toil and to pay to build the foundation and the way forward.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: corruption, ethics, open constitution initiative, Teng Biao, Xu Zhiyong
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The Leping municipal police was under pressure to solve the case during the following two years after the murders. On late May, 2002, the four defendants were arrested consecutively. The Jingdezhen Intermediate Court of first instance convicted them with murdering, robbery, raping and extortion, and sentenced the four accused to death.

After appeal, the Jiangxi Provincial High Court withdrew the judgment of first instance and remanded the case to the Intermediate Court on the grounds that the evidences were insufficient for conviction and the confessions of the four were obviously inconsistent or even contradictory with each other. The four defendants all claimed to be tortured brutally and showed their injuries. On November 18th2004, however, the Jingdezhen Intermediate Court gave the same judgment of death penalties to the four defendants again, despite the insufficient evidences and inconsistent confessions.

They appealed again. The Jiangxi Provincial High Court trialed this case, acquitted the four from the 9.9 case but again convicted them of the 5.24 case. However, without giving any reason, the death penalties were changed to suspended death penalties by the Court.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: death penalty, legal justice, Teng Biao
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