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AP
Chinese activist lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, has been confined to his home since being released from prison five months ago.
BEIJING – Chen Guangcheng may be blind, but he has seen first-hand the draconian steps security agents in China will take to thwart suspected challenges to the state.
Now he wants you to see as well.
The 39-year-old self-taught lawyer and social activist has become an international cause célèbre as of late due to the news coverage of foreign journalists’ recent attempts to enter his village and interview him.
Chen found himself at odds with the government when he filed a lawsuit in 2006 on behalf of residents of his hometown, Linyi, over the city’s practice of forced abortions and sterilizations, a municipal policy that runs counter to national regulations.
City officials were accused of forced sterilizations or abortions on as many as 7,000 residents and torturing relatives of people who had escaped such measures.
Chen has been supposedly free after a four-year prison term on what human rights activists have called trumped-up charges of “intentional damage of public property” and “gathering people to block traffic.” But reporters arriving at Linyi in Shandong province this week were blocked from entering and even had rocks thrown at them.
The physical confrontations between foreign press and (plainclothes) security officers who refused to identify themselves come on the heels of reports that Chen and his wife were subjected last week to beatings so severe that they were unable to get up from their bed. The attack is believed to have been ordered by state security officials angry over a secret video smuggled out from his home, documenting the Chen family’s life under constant, 24-hour surveillance. The video made its way to the U.S., where it was posted on the Internet by China Aid, an American Christian human rights group.
"I was in a small prison, and now I am in a larger prison," says Chen to the camera in the hour-long video, which shows security agents peering over walls into the family’s home. Chen later notes that he and his family are monitored by three shifts of security, each one consisting of more than 20 agents.
In a bid to completely isolate him from the world, security agents have confiscated Chen’s phone, and he has no access to the Internet. Jamming equipment has been installed around his home to block mobile signals, while friends and villagers who attempt to visit Chen and his family are warned that he is a traitor and that they may be charged as accomplices to his crime.
Security even drove 60 miles to detain Chen’s brother when they discovered he had purchased a SIM card for his phone.
The video is chilling in its telling of life under home detention despite the fact Chen is officially free, and it's another reminder of the fine line activists walk while agitating for change in China. While the Chinese government has been silent on Chen’s status, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton just last month cited his case while calling on Beijing to improve its human rights record.
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China is, to use Chen Guangcheng's terminology, a nation run by thugs. It threatens our allies, claims as its sole waters the whole of the South China Sea far beyond its own physical borders, and unapologetically breaks every 'law' it claims to enjoy through torture and wanton SA-type violence. It ignores its international agreements from respecting the most basic human rights (as outlined in the UN Declaration it signed to take its seat on the UN Security Council) to stealing intellectual and technological copyright. Does the West stand for nothing anymore? Do we still belong to that civilisation which lost blood and treasure to liberate the Chinese from Japanese fascism and establish democracy and the four freedoms to Hong Kong and Taiwan whilst saving untold numbers from Great Leaps Forward to Cultural Revolutions to Tiananmen Sq. massacres? Oh, for another Churchill to sound the call and marshal our old virtues one more time...
www.tracesofevil.blogspot.com
China has been investing to its own infrastructure, from speedy rail to universal healthcare.
Hope they may improve the human rights. The nation has great potential.
China has also helping/investing other underdeveloped /developed nations.
Hope they may review the human right issues.
American traitors like Steve Jobs who send jobs that could be done in America to China overlooking the worst kinds of human rights abuses by China, meanwhile here at home people who have worked all there lives have lost everything, because in their greed people like S. Jobs rich beyond all dreams of avarice what to make a few dollars more & the fact that it harms the very country that made them rich concerns them not at all! Steve Jobs & his ilk along with the Republican party are destroying America & the world!
yes, America - serment du jeu de paume...
Much respect for you!
Go Chen, sock it to the bastards.You're my HERO!
Profits first then we will worry about human rights. Right? G.E. Microsoft, Ford, G.M., etc.
Shoot first and aim later,..
I watched part of this guys video!IT'S DISGUSTING WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO HIS MAN!if any of you idiots from that joke of the chinese government are reading any of this blog i have two words for you people!DESPICABLE COWARDS!what in the bloody are you ass holes afraid of?you bastards are afraid because you are human rights abusers, in fact in one of the top 10 on this planet, and one day it will maifest itself on you and ALL HELL is going to break loose, just wait!
THIS MAN IS A HERO!
When the fact that he is visually impaired becomes secondary to the headline, this will be a good story.
Where do multiparty governments work? Where do they fail? Multiparty systems lead to people's freedoms, rights, and a reduction in corruption. However, a single party can react and implement changes in a much swifter and decisive fashion. The single party system will always trample individual rights for what "party" believes to be the good of all. China knows what is coming. They are just delaying the inevitable!
People, People, People - This is a communist country - this crap was tried a few years ago - read your history - the government rolled in tanks - shut down the media - and shot - whoever was still standing and it will happen again. YOU are the cause of this not them - you are greedy and buy and buy and buy. I want I want I want. YOU can stop this, one consumer at a time -STOP BUYING ANYTHING MADE IN CHINA- iT'S UNBELIEVABLE - EVEN OUR MILITARY UNIFORMS ARE MADE IN CHINA - Our own government; fighting wars in forign places supports a communist country. buy a pair of military boots and read the tag - sit down first -
Even if it's excessive, the government doesn't want to take that risk. Frankly, neither do most Chinese people.
I hope an end to these abuses can come through dialogue and that Chen's family will not pay the price for his "escape".
bureaucratic thugs in charge is always a time to make remarkable transitional social changes. too much power with one party and no oversight of lawful behavior of appointed dictators is always a disaster. china has two systems of enforcement, the party officials and Chinese Constitution. The problem is that party officials do not obey chinese law. bureaucratic behavior breeds favoritism. i heard that communism works, for ants, but human greed, gluttony, and lust for control makes it impossible to continue with humans. one party rule is a recipe for disaster.
Why we do business with China is beyond me. I guess its so that other countries don't get all that business. They are worse than Cuba, yet we treat them far differently.