MCLC: Chen Guangcheng's journey

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: anne henochowicz (annemh at alumni.upenn.edu)
Subject: Chen Guangcheng's journey
*************************************************************

Source: The New Yorker (4/28/12):
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2012/04/chen-guangchengs-jo
urney.html

CHEN GUANGCHENG¹S JOURNEY
By Evan Osnos

Over the years, the extraordinary journey of Chen Guangcheng has been an
inspiration, a protest, and, at times, a dark farce. Now, through his own
sheer will, his life has come to symbolize, for China and the United
States, an opportunity.

Sometime in the last few days, Chen slipped out
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/28/world/asia/chen-guangcheng-blind-lawyer-
escapes-house-arrest-china.html?pagewanted=2&hp> of the stone farmhouse on
the rural plains of Shandong province where he has been held under house
arrest, with his family, off and on since 2005. If Chen¹s captors had been
readers of history, they might have predicted that he would not acclimate
to limitations. Born blind, to a peasant family, he once ventured four
hundred miles to Beijing, when he was in his early twenties, to file a tax
complaint. Later, he was steered into the study of massage and
acupuncture<one of the few professions available to the blind in China<but
he leveraged that opportunity into taking law courses, and became a
pioneering attorney on behalf of women subjected to forced abortions and
sterilizations under the one-child policy. Lastly, his captors might have
done well to remember that the last time he escaped, in the summer of
2005, he slipped out of his house after nine o¹clock, because the darkness
gave him an advantage. This time he escaped at night once again, and made
his way to Beijing with the help of accomplices. He is now believed to be
under the protection of U.S. diplomats. (They have not confirmed.)

For years, Chen¹s case has been a confusing blot on China¹s aspirations
for reform; every step that the country took toward greater rule of law or
judicial accountability was cheapened by the fact that, ever since Chen¹s
legal challenges embarrassed his local government in 2005, central
authorities in Beijing have been unwilling or unable to prevent local
apparatchiks from systematically abusing him. His case became a kind of
authoritarian tragicomedy in 2006, when Chen, who had once been celebrated
in the local press for his determination to become a lawyer, was sentenced
to four years and three months in jail for ³destroying property² and
³assembling a crowd for the purpose of disrupting traffic²<even though, at
the time, he had been under house arrest. Even the nationalist corners of
the Chinese press could no longer understand it. Last October, the Global
Times 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/28/us-china-dissident-chen-idUSBRE8
3R08F20120428> wrote
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/28/us-china-dissident-chen-idUSBRE8
3R08F20120428> that "the case of Chen Guangcheng has become exaggerated
into a mirror of China¹s human rights, and it seems that we need more
experienced authorities to lance this boil."

Since getting out of jail, Chen has spent nineteen months in undeclared
house arrest, with no legal justification; he has been barred from contact
with the outside, and has been frequently assaulted. Like many others, I
tried to visit Chen¹s house. It was 2005, and I got no further than the
front yard before plainclothes police and their proxies moved in. They
pushed me into a taxi, sent me away, and tailed the car to the county
line. This week, however, Chen succeeded in doing what dozens of reporters
and lawyers and activists<and at least one Hollywood star<have failed to
do: He broadcast his voice to the world. "I implore the Chinese government
to ensure the safety of my family according to the principles of upholding
the rule of law," he said in a videotaped appeal
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycMCdAtgeu0> to China's Prime Minister,
recorded in hiding in Beijing, and now widely circulated. In his message
(translated in full
<http://sjreporter.blogspot.com/2012/04/chen-guangcheng-addresses-premier-w
en.html>), he mixed the language of a lawyer ("As an affected party, I
hereby accuse them of the following crimes") with a medical and logistical
accounting of his ordeal, including injuries sustained by his wife, Yuan
Weijing, from guards' beatings: a "left orbital bone," "lumbar disc
protrusion." But perhaps the most striking passage is not about violence.
It is about the arrangement of guards dedicated to keeping him alone and
silent, an image that will linger in Chinese history as the physical
expression of a regime that has become afraid of its own people:

<<They station one team inside the house and another one outside, guarding
each of the four corners. Further out, they block each road leading to my
house, and extend as far as the village entrance. They dedicate seven to
eight people to guarding bridges in neighboring villages.[On the] roads
leading to my village, they dedicate up to twenty-eight guards to them
each day. My understanding is that the number of officials and policemen
who participate in my persecution adds up to about one hundred.>>

In his escape and his appeal, Chen has posed several questions. He has
asked Premier Wen Jiabao to protect his family and address the corruption
at the root of his case. In doing so, Chen has given Wen perhaps his final
chance, in the final months of a frustrated ten-year term, to fulfill his
oft-stated intentions to reform the system. As of now, Wen will be
remembered as a well-intentioned but ultimately ineffective advocate for
political reform. If he can protect Chen¹s family, and bring his abusers
to justice, Wen will have an accomplishment worth noting. It will do
nothing to undermine Chinese stability and economic growth<so often the
excuses to defer systemic reform<to address the crimes visited upon Chen
Guangcheng.

To the United States, he has presented a related question. What do a blind
peasant lawyer and the privileged senior Party police boss Wang Lijun--who
fled to the U.S. consulate in February--have in common? When their system
failed them, each man, from opposite ends of the political spectrum,
sought protection from the Americans. We should be proud of that.

Chen's timing is, I suspect, no coincidence: Next week, Hillary Clinton,
Timothy Geithner, and a raft of other officials arrive in Beijing for the
annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue. Even American officials who
sympathize with Chen will find this awkward. They need China for
diplomatic support and persuasion on Iran, North Korea, Syria, and
more<and the last thing they want is a fight over a dissident. Wanted or
not, the moment to demand justice for Chen has arrived. Asked if the U.S.
should protect him, Susan L. Shirk, a former State Department official,
told the Times: "A blind lawyer who is being persecuted for exposing
forced abortions? I don't think there's any question about it." In other
words, it's not clear if Chen is in the embassy or elsewhere, but it's
difficult to imagine the administration not finding a solution to ensure
that Chen stays safe. It will succeed, I'm sure, but while they're at it,
the visiting Americans should make clear that they are no less concerned
about the fate of Chen¹s relatives: his wife; a nephew, Chen Kegui
<http://chinageeks.org/2012/04/chen-escapes-but-chilling-signs-for-chen-gua
ngchengs-family/>; and activists, including He Peirong
<https://twitter.com/#%21/pearlher>, who are said to have helped him
escape.

It's not clear how the American delegation will finesse this extraordinary
moment, but a great many will be watching. So far, the only side to have
declared its strategy is Chen himself. "If anything is to happen to my
family," he said in his video to the world, "there will be no end to my
pursuit of this issue."