MCLC: Bale tries to visit Chen Guangcheng

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Jacqueline and Martin Winter <dujuan99 at gmail.com>.edu)
Subject: Bale tries to visit Chen Guangcheng
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Source: CNN 
(12/15/11):http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/15/world/asia/china-bale-activist
/index.html 

(includes videos)

DONGSHIGU VILLAGE, China (CNN) -- As Christian Bale approached an
impromptu checkpoint leading to this tiny village in eastern China, four
men blocking the narrow path started marching toward him in menacing
unison.

"I am here to see Chen Guangcheng," the "Dark Knight" actor said and I
translated, with correspondent Stan Grant and cameraman Brad Olson next to
us.

"Go away!" the plainclothes guards barked, pushing us back.

Amid the scuffling and yelling, dozens more guards in olive-green,
military-style overcoats -- and two gray minivans -- emerged from the
other side of the checkpoint, all coming toward us.

"Why can I not visit this free man?" Bale asked repeatedly, only to
receive punches from guards aiming for his small camera as they tried to
drag him away from the rest of us.

As we retreated, I recognized the ringleader -- the same burly man who had
hurled rocks at the CNN team 10 months earlier to force us out of the same
location.

A precarious scene ensued Thursday as one of the gray minivans chased our
car at high speed on bumpy country roads for some 40 minutes.

When the dust settled, we counted a broken car, a damaged camera -- and a
Hollywood star disappointed at -- but not shocked by -- his failure to see
a personal hero.

"What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say
what an inspiration he is," Bale said.

The man, 40-year-old Chen Guangcheng, has been confined to his home along
with his wife, mother and daughter, and watched around the clock by dozens
of guards since he was released from prison in September 2010. A local
court had sentenced him to more than four years in prison for damaging
property and disrupting traffic in a protest.

His supporters maintain authorities used trumped-up charges to silence
Chen, a blind, self-taught lawyer who rose to fame in the late 1990s
thanks to his legal advocacy for what he called victims of abusive
practices by China's family-planning officials.

Bale first learned about Chen through news reports, including our coverage
in February, when he was in China filming "The Flowers of War," a wartime
drama set in 1930s Nanjing in which he plays a mortician trying to save a
group of schoolgirls from the clutches invading Japanese soldiers.

The injustice faced by the activist and his family stirred such strong
emotions in Bale that, upon hearing his impending return to China to
promote the movie, he decided to do something unusual to raise the
international awareness of Chen and thereby to turn up the heat on the
Chinese government.

"This doesn't come naturally to me, this is not what I actually enjoy --
it isn't about me," he explained during our eight-hour drive from Beijing
to the eastern city of Linyi, where Chen's village is located. "But this
was just a situation that said I can't look the other way."

Known to be a media-shy celebrity, Bale reached out to CNN and invited us
to join him on his journey to visit Chen.
In the car, he lamented the American public's lack of knowledge on Chen's
case, despite senior U.S. officials' increasingly vocal support for his
freedom. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Gary Locke, the American
ambassador to China, have both championed Chen's cause.

Although China's state media has largely ignored the story, Chen's plight
has spread online and outraged a growing number of Chinese "netizens."
Many have tried to visit Chen, and activists say nearly all would-be
visitors have been turned back, often violently, by plainclothes police
and local thugs.

"I'm not brave doing this," Bale emphasized. "The local people who are
standing up to the authorities, who are visiting Chen and his family and
getting beaten or detained, I want to support them."

As our car sped toward Beijing in the dark, Bale wondered aloud if he
would never be allowed back -- a prospect he is prepared to accept -- even
as "The Flowers of War" became China's official entry into next year's
Academy Awards.
"Really, what else can I do to help Chen?" he kept asking as the clock
struck midnight, with his latest movie -- partially funded by the state --
about to open nationwide in China.