In 2005, I met Chen Guangcheng, then a barely known, self-taught legal activist, for a story I was writing on his advocacy on behalf of women who had been forced to undergo abortions or sterilizations by officials in Shandong’s Linyi city. Such local punitive measures in fact contravened national regulations on the application of China’s so-called one-child policy, but officials in Linyi were worried that their promotions would be compromised because of a high number of extra births in their region. With Chen’s help, I met several local women from Linyi, including one who said local doctors strapped her down and shoved a poison-filled needle into her abdomen two days before her due date, killing the baby. “Someone has to fight for people with no voice,” Chen told me. “I guess that person is me.”
But just a few hours after our last meeting in Beijing in 2005, local security from Shandong showed up in the Chinese capital, hustled Chen into an unmarked vehicle and took him back home. Since then, he has been in detention, either in jail or under house arrest, along with his wife and child. In 2006, he was sentenced to more than four years in jail on seemingly trumped-up charges of “damaging property and organizing a mob to disturb traffic.” Upon his release, Chen was forced into house arrest, along with his wife and daughter. At times, dozens of security officials and local thugs have guarded his home, which remains inaccessible to visiting advocates and local and foreign media.
During one of our meetings in Shanghai and Beijing, Chen described how he had evaded local security who were already guarding his home and trying to prevent him from leaving in the late summer of 2005. Because he was blind, he said, he decided to escape at night when those guarding him would be at a disadvantage. Sneaking into a nearby cornfield with a family member, he began throwing gravel in different directions to confuse the security personnel who were trying to follow him. “The night gives me an advantage,” Chen said. “I can navigate better than people with sight can.” After walking for kilometers and meeting up with a friend, Chen was able to drive to safety and eventually turn up in Shanghai and later Beijing, where he tried to meet with national family-planning officials to tell them about the abuses in Linyi.
On Friday afternoon, a 15-minute video was uploaded on YouTube, which is blocked in China, showing Chen in an undisclosed location, reportedly after he fled house arrest. “I’m here to confirm that everything on the Internet and the accusation about Linyi’s atrocities committed against me are all true,” he said. “What actually happened was worse than what people have talked about online.” In the video, Chen went on to directly ask China’s Premier Wen Jiabao, who has emerged as a relatively reformist voice within the country’s central leadership, to personally intervene in his case. Describing the multiple beatings he and his wife sustained, Chen demanded: “You have to find out and punish the person according to the law. Matters like this are too detrimental to the Communist Party’s image.” The blind advocate, who was filmed wearing aviator sunglasses, also listed the names of some of the local officials he accused of persecuting him and his family. Finally, he pleaded on behalf of his relatives who are still back in Linyi’s Dongshigu village. “Even though I managed to escape, my family are still in their hands,” he said. “My family may face crazy revenge from them. I’m asking the Chinese government to secure the security of my family. If anything happens to them, I will never give up on pursuing whoever is responsible.”
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