MCLC: Chen Guangcheng may be in US embassy

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Chen Guangcheng may be in US embassy
***********************************************************

Source: NYT 
(4/27/12):http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/28/world/asia/chen-guangcheng-blin
d-lawyer-escapes-house-arrest-china.html

Challenge for U.S. After Escape by China Activist
By ANDREW JACOBS and JONATHAN ANSFIELD

BEIJING ‹ The dramatic nighttime escape of a blind rights lawyer from
extralegal house arrest in his village dealt a major embarrassment to the
Chinese government and left the United States, which may be sheltering
him, with a new diplomatic quandary as it seeks to improve its fraught
relationship with Beijing.

The lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, one of the best-known and most politically
savvy Chinese dissidents, evaded security forces surrounding his home this
week and, aided by an underground network of human rights activists,
secretly made his way about 300 miles to Beijing, where he is believed to
have found refuge in the American Embassy, according to advocates and
Chinese officials.

An official in the Chinese Ministry of State Security on Friday said that
Mr. Chen had reached the United States Embassy, but American officials
would not confirm reports that Mr. Chen had found shelter there.

Mr. Chen¹s escape represents a significant public relations challenge for
the Chinese government, which has sought to relegate him to obscurity,
confining him to his home in the remote village of Dongshigu and
surrounding him with plainclothes security guards, even though there are
no outstanding legal charges against him.

The case also poses a major new diplomatic test for the United States. In
February, the Obama administration was thrust into an internal Chinese
political dispute when Wang Lijun, the former top police official from the
region of Chongqing, sought refuge in the American Consulate in Chengdu.
Mr. Wang revealed details about the killing of a British businessman,
setting off a cascade of events that led to the downfall of Bo Xilai, who
was the party chief in Chongqing and a member of China¹s Politburo.
American diplomats said they had determined that Mr. Wang¹s case did not
involve national security, and he was turned over to Chinese officials,
prompting criticism from some in Washington about their handling of the
case. Both sides insist Mr. Wang left of his own accord.

But with Mr. Chen now believed to be on the grounds of the American
Embassy in Beijing, administration officials are likely to be far more
cautious in handling his case. His advocacy for the handicapped and for
families subject to forced abortions and other coercive population control
methods is widely known in the West. He also became a symbol of the
deficiencies of China¹s legal system after he was convicted of criminal
charges in 2006 in a prosecution that Chinese lawyers ‹ and even some
officials in Beijing ‹ felt made a mockery of China¹s claims to be
developing better legal norms.

Mr. Chen, according to those who have spoken to him, slipped away on
Sunday evening from his home in Shandong Province, where he has been held
incommunicado since his release from prison in September 2010. Ai Weiwei,
the artist and government critic who has also been subjected to
residential detention, though far less draconian, said he had spoken to a
friend who met with Mr. Chen in Beijing on Wednesday. The friend said Mr.
Chen had climbed over a wall at night and evaded multiple lines of guards.

³You know he¹s blind, so the night to him is nothing,² Mr. Ai said the
friend told him. ³I think that¹s a perfect metaphor.²
Among those who helped Mr. Chen was He Peirong
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/27/arrest-fears-china-activist-he
lped-escape>, a family friend who said Mr. Chen had planned his escape far
in advance, staying in bed for long periods of time to trick guards into
thinking he was too sick to walk. In an account she wrote on her microblog
early Friday, Ms. He said that Mr. Chen had called her after fleeing the
village. She said she then picked him up in her car, and they drove to
Beijing. By late morning on Friday, Ms. He had been taken by public
security agents from her home in Nanjing, according to Bob Fu, president
of China Aid, a Christian rights group in Texas. Her microblog account was
later deleted.

 A spokesman for China¹s foreign minister on Friday said he had no
information about the episode, but one intelligence officer expressed
bewilderment that Mr. Chen had evaded his local government captors and had
probably entered the embassy.

³It¹s still not clear how this happened,² the intelligence officer said.
³Was this happenstance, or was it planned this way? Are there others
planning to do the same?²

The timing is especially inopportune for Beijing, given that it is
preparing to welcome Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Treasury
Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and other American officials next week for
the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

A vice foreign minister, Cui Tiankai, said Saturday morning that the
meeting would go ahead as planned next week. Mr. Cui also played down the
Chen case. ³I don¹t think this issue will occupy much time or focus,² he
said, regarding the meeting. ³So I have no information for you on it.²

The escape creates headaches for Washington, which has been eager to
improve relations with the Chinese on various economic and security
issues. Those efforts have lately paid dividends, with Beijing
increasingly cooperating with American diplomatic moves to pressure Iran
and North Korea over their nuclear programs. China has also shown a
willingness to support United Nations efforts to broker a cease-fire in
Syria.

Mrs. Clinton has addressed Mr. Chen¹s case on several occasions, most
recently in a speech on Asian policy in November that prompted a sharp
rebuke from Beijing. ³We are alarmed by recent incidents in Tibet of young
people lighting themselves on fire in desperate acts of protest,² she said
then, ³as well as the continued house arrest of the Chinese lawyer Chen
Guangcheng. We continue to call on China to embrace a different path.²

On Friday, however, the State Department¹s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland,
said she would make no comment about Mr. Chen¹s escape or his whereabouts.
The White House also declined to comment, and a scheduled briefing on Mrs.
Clinton¹s planned visit was postponed.

³Chen Guangcheng is a very strong candidate for asylum,² said Susan L.
Shirk, a former State Department official who is now a professor at the
University of California, San Diego. ³A blind lawyer who is being
persecuted for exposing forced abortions? I don¹t think there¹s any
question about it.²

But, as in the exploding scandal surrounding Bo Xilai, the Obama
administration has sought to keep itself out of China¹s internal politics.

Rights advocates said Mr. Chen was not seeking to leave China
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/c
hina/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>, but would try to negotiate his freedom
with the Chinese authorities.

³He is reluctant to go overseas and wants only to live like a normal
Chinese citizen,² said Mr. Fu.
Shortly after news of Mr. Chen¹s daring escape began circulating, a video
appeared on YouTube on Friday, filmed in the days since he gained his
freedom, in which he described life
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycMCdAtgeu0> under house arrest. The
video, in the form of an appeal to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, detailed the
abuse that he and his family suffered.

He told of how his daughter was followed to school by three guards each
day and how guards had kicked his wife for hours on end. ³Prime Minister
Wen, you owe the people an explanation,² he said. ³Are these atrocities
the result of local officials violating the law or a result of orders from
the top leadership?²

It is not the first time that Mr. Chen has sought to publicize the details
of his confinement. Last year, he and his wife were reportedly severely
beaten after a video they secretly recorded inside their home was smuggled
out of the village and posted on the Internet. Friends say the subsequent
abuse by their captors had left Mr. Chen in frail health.Mr. Chen, 40, is

a self-taught lawyer, who was once lauded by the state media for his work
defending farmers and the disabled. But he angered local officials after
taking on the case of thousands of women who had been forcibly sterilized
in Linyi County. During a brief trial in 2006, he was sentenced to 51
months in jail on charges of destroying property and assembling a crowd to
disrupt traffic ‹ charges that advocates say were trumped up, given that
he was under house arrest at the time.

After his release, he was taken directly to his family¹s stone farmhouse,
which was turned into a makeshift prison. His wife, and for a time his
young daughter, were also confined inside the house, which was ringed by
surveillance cameras, floodlights and a rotating cordon of guards.

Reporters, diplomats and Chinese activists who tried to visit Mr. Chen
were violently repelled
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/world/asia/despite-violence-chinese-diss
idents-emboldened-supporters-stream-to-see-him.html?pagewanted=all> by
guards.

Rights advocates on Friday expressed concern for Mr. Chen and for his
wife, Yuan Weijing, who activists said was left behind. Still, Mr. Fu of
China Aid said he was optimistic that Mr. Chen might be able to negotiate
his freedom. ³The fact that he¹s escaped will really shake up Chinese
security forces,² he said. ³It tells them that they are not almighty God.²

Reporting was contributed by Edward Wong, Sharon LaFraniere, Michael Wines
and Jane Perlez from Beijing, and Steven Lee Myers from Washington. Mia Li
and Shi Da contributed research.