A Shandong court has rejected an attempt by Chen Guangcheng’s brother’s to sue local authorities for bursting into his home in the middle of the night to search for the missing activist. During the incident, Chen Guangfu’s son struck at the intruders with a kitchen knife, and is now in custody awaiting trial. From Reuters’ Sui-lee Wee:
The Yinan County People’s Court rejected Chen Guangfu’s lawsuit on the grounds that he did not provide “any corresponding evidence” and therefore he “cannot prove that his claims are based in reality”, Chen Guangfu said by telephone from his village of Dongshigu.
[…] Chen Guangfu is trying to sue police and local government officials that oversee his village for “scaling the walls of his home and for wrecking his home” just after midnight on April 27, the day after they discovered his blind brother had escaped.
“This outcome was expected; it’s just one of their rogue tactics,” Chen Guangfu, 55, told Reuters. “How can they say the evidence doesn’t correspond with reality? Kegui is still in their hands.”
Chen plans to appeal the rejection.
Though Dongshigu’s fortress-like condition is a thing of the past, five supporters were detained this week while trying to visit the village in another sign of continued pressure on Chen’s family. The group had hoped to offer congratulations for a human rights award Chen Guangcheng recently received in New York. Their detention recalls repeated attempts to visit the activist during his two-year house arrest; among these earlier would-be visitors was Batman star Christian Bale, who presented the award last week. From the AFP:
On Saturday, in Shandong’s Linyi city up to 40 special forces police stopped five women from boarding a bus to Chen’s nearby village, where they had planned to congratulate his family, Liu Guohui, an organiser of the visit, told AFP.
[…] The five women were released within 20 hours of their arrest. Liu remains under house arrest and is unable to leave home without the escort of official minders, she said.
[…] Despite the heavy police effort to stop supporters, two rights activists made it to the village and handed over a banner congratulating Chen, the dissident’s brother Chen Guangfu told AFP.
See also CNN’s Steven Jiang retracing the first steps in Chen Guangcheng’s daring escape from Dongshigu, via CDT.
