MCLC: Chen Guangcheng and exile

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: A. E. Clark <aec at raggedbanner.com>
Subject: Chen Guangcheng and exile
***********************************************************

Source: The Guardian
(5/4/12):http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/04/chen-guangchen
g-exile 

Chen Guangcheng knows exile isn't easy, but it may be his best bet
Even before the internet, dissidents in exile were able to create networks
that provided a lifeline to those back home
By Jo Glanville

The desperate plight of Chen Guangcheng is a graphic illustration of how
China treats its dissidents. Harassed and intimidated, Chen has spent the
past seven years between prison and house arrest
<http://uncut.indexoncensorship.org/2011/10/china-free-chen-guangcheng-move
ment-grows-despite-violence/> since he exposed the government's forced
abortion policy in 2005 (he was awarded the Index freedom of expression
award for whistleblowing in 2007). House arrest is a common tactic in
China for containing and controlling whistleblowers and activists. In
Chen's case, since his release from prison in 2010, it has meant a life of
social isolation and fear. Other current well-known victims include
Tibetan poet Tsering Woeser
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/02/china-tibetan-blogger-prince-c
laus-award> and Ai Weiwei, who famously attempted to turn China's tactics
on their head by installing his own in-house surveillance
<http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/04/world/asia/ai-weiwei-webcams/index.html>
.

The week's dramatic events echo the story of celebrated dissident Fang
Lizhi, who died last month; Fang also took refuge in the US embassy
following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and stayed for more than a
year until China allowed him to leave. Fang was one of the most important
influences on the Tiananmen generation of young activists and the
authorities considered him "the biggest black hand behind the 4 June
riots". In exile in the US for the rest of his life, as well as pursuing
his academic career as an astrophysicist, he remained active in speaking
out for human rights in China along with other exiles of 1989, including
Wang Dan.

The experience of exile for dissidents, despite the continuing possibility
for influence, can bring another kind of isolation. "Homelessness,
loneliness and despair have almost driven me to self-destruction," wrote
the poet Liu Hongbin on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square. It is
only through memory, he has written movingly
<http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/06/tiananmen-20-liu-hongbin/>, that
he has made the journey home. Writer Ma Jian, who has written the
definitive novel of the Tiananmen generation, Beijing Coma, while in
exile, was still able to visit China regularly until last year ­ a measure
of how far the situation has deteriorated. Chen's desire for "a rest", as
he told Congress, is likely to be more than a short stay.

However, there are networks that can only be built from exile and that
have always been a lifeline for dissidents back home, long before Twitter,
SMS and Facebook revolutionised the possibilities of making revolution.
Under editor George Theiner, a Czech dissident in exile in London, Index
on Censorship magazine published the leading lights of Czechoslovakia's
pro-democracy movement in the 80s, most notably Václav Havel, as well as
publishing and distributing Polish and Czechsamizdat
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat> ­ a vital outlet for opposition
activists. When Index's founding editor Michael Scammell started
publishing the most famous dissident of them all, Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
the great man panicked: when he heard that his work was appearing so
widely in English, he thought it was the KGB who was circulating his
writing as part of a political provocation. But it was the first worldwide
publication of much of his work in translation and an immensely important
part of circulating the plight of dissidents in the Soviet Union.

Forty years on, Belarusian activists in exile have played a vital role in
galvanising opposition to Alexander Lukashenko's regime. Since the
elections in 2010, following the mass arrests and imprisonment of the
opposition, some of the leading lights of the pro-democracy movement have
settled in London and Warsaw where they have helped to shape a successful
European campaign alongside human rights groups. Natalia Kaladia, artistic
director of the acclaimed Belarus Free Theatre, had to flee Belarus
following her arrest and the intimidation of her family. In a campaign
with Index, her new organisation Free Belarus Now, which she runs with
Irina Bogdanova, sister of former political prisoner Andrei Sannikov, has
helped to persuade Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas to stop doing business
with Lukashenko's regime
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/banks-halt-belarus-deals-ov
er-repression-2375964.html>.
While none would choose exile, Chen is reported as telling the US
ambassador that "he wanted to be part of the struggle to improve human
rights within China", thanks to the internet it is now perhaps more
possible than it ever was in the days of the carbon copies of samizdat to
continue to exert an influence back home.