Chen Guangcheng

Chen Guangcheng
Traditional Chinese	陳光誠
Simplified Chinese	陈光诚
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Chén Guāngchéng IPA [ʈʂʰə̌n kwáŋʈʂʰə̌ŋ]

Chen Guangcheng
Born	(1971-11-12) November 12, 1971
Nationality	People's Republic of China
Education	attended Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine (1998-2001)
Occupation	lawyer
Employer	self
Known for	activism on behalf of rural poor
Spouse	Yuan Weijing
Awards	Time 100 (2006) Ramon Magsaysay Award (2007)

Chen Guangcheng (born November 12, 1971) is a civil rights activist in the People's Republic of China who drew international attention to human rights issues in rural areas. He was placed under house arrest from September 2005 to March 2006 after organizing and publicizing a class-action lawsuit against the government of Linyi Prefecture, Shandong Province, for excessive enforcement of the One-child policy, officially euphemistically called "family planning policy". Authorities formally arrested him in June 2006. During his trial, Chen's lawyers were forbidden access to the court, leaving him without a proper defender. On August 24, 2006, Chen was sentenced to four years and three months for "damaging property and organising a mob to disturb traffic".

Chen was released from prison on September 8, 2010 after serving his full sentence, but remained under house arrest or "soft detention" at his home in Dongshigu Village (东师古村). Chen and his wife were reportedly beaten shortly after a human rights group released a video of their home under intense police surveillance on February 9, 2011.

Chen's case received sustained international attention, with the U.S. State Department, the British Foreign Secretary, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International issuing appeals for his release; the latter group designated him a prisoner of conscience. Chen is a 2007 laureate of the Ramon Magsaysay Award and in 2006 was named to the Time 100.

On 22 April 2012, Chen escaped his house arrest and was reported to have fled to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

Early life

Due to a severe fever, Chen lost his sight at an early age. He was illiterate until 1994 when he was enrolled by Qingdao High School for the Blind and graduated in 1998. He studied in Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine from 1998 to 2001. After graduation he returned to his home region and found a job as a masseur in the hospital of Yinan county. Nonetheless, he managed to audit in law classes and learned enough to aid his fellow villagers when they sought his assistance.

Activism

In 2005, Chen exposed harsh illegal measures by local authorities when enforcing the one-child policy, where family planning officials from Linyi municipal authorities in Shandong forced thousands of people to undergo sterilization or to abort pregnancies. Chinese national regulations prohibit such brutal measures. The officials were also accused of detaining and torturing relatives of people who had escaped from the forced measures.

Chen filed a class-action lawsuit on the women's behalf against Linyi officials and drew attention to the plight of the villagers. He also traveled to Beijing in June 2005 to seek redress. Although the suit he filed was rejected, the incident was publicised on the Internet and by the Time magazine who interviewed Chen. This prompted the National Population and Family Planning Commission to launch an investigation in August 2005. A month later, the Commission announced that several Linyi officials were detained.

Detention and trial

Chen met with foreign reporters in Beijing to publicize his lawsuit and the allegations within it that Linyi officials were engaged in compulsory sterilization, and more rarely, forced abortion. Local officials responded by portraying Chen as working for "foreign anti-China forces", pointing out that he had received foreign funding for his campaign. After Chen refused negotiations with local officials to cease his activism, Linyi authorities placed him under house arrest from September 2005. He attempted to escape for contacts in Beijing in October, but was beaten and held back.

Chen was removed from his house in March 2006 and was formally detained in June 2006 by Yinan county officials. He was scheduled to stand trial on 17 July 2006 on charges of destruction of property and assembling a crowd to disrupt traffic, but this was delayed at the request of the prosecution. According to Radio Free Asia and Chinese Human Rights Defenders, the prosecution delayed the trial because a crowd of Chen supporters gathered outside the courthouse. With only a few days notice, authorities rescheduled Chen's trial for August 18, 2006.

On the eve of his trial, all three of his lawyers were detained by Yinan police. Two were released after being questioned and their phones confiscated. Xu Zhiyong of the Yitong Law Firm, perhaps the lawyer with the most knowledge of the forced abortion cases Chen was working on, was detained after authorities accused him of stealing a man's wallet. He was not released until the trial concluded on the 18th. None of Chen's lawyers were allowed in the courtroom for the trial. Only Chen's brothers were allowed inside. Not even Chen's wife was allowed to hear proceedings. Instead, authorities appointed their own public defender for Chen just before the trial began. As a result, the defender had not even read the case report before he walked into the courtroom. The defender did little to help his new client's case and did not raise any objection to the proceedings or to any of the evidence presented, despite Chen's protest in the court. The trial lasted just two hours. On August 24, 2006, Chen was sentenced to four years and three months for "damaging property and organising a mob to disturb traffic". As a result of Chen's trial, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett selected his case for the cover of the British government's 2006 human rights report, stating concern over "the handling of Chen's case" and calling for the Chinese government "to prove its commitment to building rule of law".

On November 30, 2006, Yinan County court upheld Chen's sentence, and on January 12, 2007, the Linyi Intermediate Court in Shandong Province rejected his final appeal. The same court had overturned his original conviction in December 2006 citing lack of evidence. However, Chen was convicted in a second trial on identical charges and given an identical sentence by the Yinan court. Following the trial, Amnesty International declared him to be a prisoner of conscience, "jailed solely for his peaceful activities in defence of human rights".

House arrest

After being released from prison in 2010, Chen was placed under house arrest, closely monitored at his home village. He and his wife, however, have attempted to communicate via video tape and written communication. The government responded by beating Chen and his wife, confiscating documents and communication devices in their possession, cutting off electric power, and installing metal sheets over the windows of their house. Official harassment of Chen's family continued throughout his house arrest, including of Chen's six-year-old daughter, who was briefly banned from attending school and had her toys confiscated by guards, and of Chen's mother, who was harassed while working in the fields.

In 2011, The New York Times reported that a number of supporters and admirers had attempted to penetrate the security detail that monitors Chen's home to visit him, but had been turned away. In some instance, his supporters were pummeled, beaten, or robbed by security agents. Would-be visitors include journalists, European diplomats, lawyers, and intellectuals. U.S. Congressman Chris Smith attempted to visit Chen in November 2011, but was not granted permission. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the U.S. government as "alarmed" by Chen's continued detention and called on China "to embrace a different path". Human Rights Watch described his house arrest as "unlawful" and called on authorities to give Chen his freedom.

In December 2011, actor Christian Bale attempt to visit Chen along with a CNN crew, but was barred, pushed and manhandled by dozens of Chinese security guards. Bale wanted to show his solidarity with one of the most prominent human rights activists and support his cause. Bale later stated that he had wanted "to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is". Video footage also showed Bale and the CNN crew having stones thrown at them, and a minivan then chased their car for more than 40 minutes.

Escape

On 22 April 2012, Chen escaped from house arrest where he was being held despite there being no pending charges against him. Fellow dissident Ai Weiwei said a friend told him that Chen waited until night, climbed over his compound walls, and slipped past "multiple cordons of guards". "You know he's blind, so the night to him is nothing," Ai's friend stated.

Chen's friend and fellow activist Hu Jia stated that Chen had been planning escape "for a long time", and had previously attempted to dig a tunnel for escape, but failed. In the weeks leading up to his escape, Chen tried to create the impression among his guards that he was ill in bed and had stopped appearing outside the house by day, allowing him multiple days to climb over the walls around his compound before his absence was discovered. Communicating with a network of activists via a cell phone that had been smuggled to him, Chen went over the wall around his house and past the layers of security around his village, reaching a pre-determined pickup point 20 hours into the escape. A chain of human rights activists then smuggled him into Beijing, where he reportedly reached the U.S. Embassy.

On 27 April, Chen Guangcheng's supporters announced that he was safe in Beijing at an undisclosed location. Hu stated that Chen was given refuge at the U.S. Embassy, which the Embassy refused to confirm or deny. According to supporters, Chen was not attempting to leave China, but was hoping to negotiate with authorities "to live like a normal Chinese citizen". The New York Times described the reports that the U.S. Embassy was sheltering Chen as a "diplomatic quandary" at a time when the U.S. was seeking to improve relations with China and seeks its support with respect to crises in Iran, Sudan, Syria, and North Korea.

Also on 27 April, Chen posted a video to YouTube, in which he expressed his concern that the authorities would carry out "insane retribution" on his family and made three demands of Premier Wen Jiabao: 1) that local officials who allegedly assaulted his family be prosecuted; 2) that his family's safety be guaranteed; and 3) that the Chinese government prosecute corruption cases under the law. Chen's brother, Chen Guangfu, and nephew, Chen Kegui, were reportedly both arrested in Dongshigu on suspicions of aiding his escape. Amnesty International called on China to guarantee the safety of Chen, his family, and his friends, stating, "It is time for this shameful saga to end."

The escape came only weeks after the Bo Xilai incident, in which a former Communist Party boss was removed from office in a corruption scandal, leading BBC News to describe it as "an unwelcome time for China's leaders" to face further embarrassment. Within twenty-four hours, Chen's name as well as the phrases "CGC" and "the blind man" had been blocked by Chinese online censors in an effort to quell Internet discussion of the case. As of 27 April, Chinese state media had not carried "a single line of news" about the escape. The New York Times wrote that news of the escape "electrified China’s rights activists".

International recognition

In 2007, Chen Guangcheng was named one of the Time 100, Time's annual list of "100 men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming our world". The citation stated, "He may have lost his sight as a child, but Chen Guangcheng's legal vision has helped illuminate the plight of thousands of Chinese villagers."

Later that year, Chen won the Ramon Magsaysay Award while still in detention. The award, often called the "Asian Nobel Award", was bestowed for "his irrepressible passion for justice in leading ordinary Chinese citizens to assert their legitimate rights under the law". On 24 August 2007, AIDS activist Hu Jia reported that the passport of Chen's wife Yuan Weijing had been revoked and her mobile phone confiscated by Chinese authorities at Beijing Capital International Airport on her way to attend the Magsaysay Award ceremony on her husband's behalf.

See also

• Weiquan movement
• One-child policy

References

Template:Persondata