The brother of blind activist Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠) has fled his village in eastern China, evading a security clampdown to seek help from lawyers for his son, who has been detained in a case that has become a rallying point among rights activists.
Chen Guangfu (陳光福), the eldest brother of Chen Guangcheng, said he walked out of his home in Shandong Province at 3am on Tuesday, eluding the increased number of sentries near his village by avoiding roads and running through fields. He arrived in Beijing on Wednesday evening after a six-hour journey by car.
His activist brother escaped Dongshigu village late last month after 19 months of detention at home, following a similar route to the capital, before taking refuge in the US embassy, where he stayed for six days, sparking a diplomatic crisis between China and the US.
Photo: Reuters
That crisis, which overshadowed a visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, was finally defused on Saturday when China allowed Chen Guangcheng to fly to the US to study, but while Chen Guangcheng spent his first few days in New York after years of jail and detention, most of his family back home in Shandong have remained under a security clampdown.
In a rare interview since his brother escaped last month, 55-year-old Chen Guangfu recounted details of his own torture and reprisals by authorities since his brother’s escape.
He said he was restricted from leaving the village and that police in Shandong warned him they would increase the sentence for his son, Chen Kegui (陳克貴), who is being held on an attempted murder charge, if he gave interviews.
“I feel since they are already doing this, why can’t I say something?” Chen Guangfu said late on Wednesday in a teahouse in western Beijing. “I have the power to speak up.”
“I told them their claims have no legal basis, but are based on power or by their will to determine Kegui’s sentence. On this point, I’ll never be able to accept it,” he said, adding that he planned to return to his village soon.
Local government and public security bureau officials were not immediately available for comment.
Chen Kegui, 32, was charged with “intentional homicide” for using knives to fend off local officials who burst into his home on April 27, the day after they discovered his blind uncle had escaped. He could face the death penalty. His lawyers, denied access to him on Friday, said he did not kill anyone.
Chen Guangfu’s wife, Ren Zongju (任宗舉), may also be indicted for “harboring” her son, a charge punishable by up to 10 years jail, lawyers said. She was detained on April 29 and freed on bail.
His daughter-in-law, Liu Fang (劉芳), has been in Beijing for the past three weeks seeking lawyers for her husband.
Reprisals began soon after Chen Guangchen’s escape was discovered. Just after midnight on April 27, men in plainclothes scaled the walls of Chen Guangfu’s home and kicked open the doors. They put a hood over him and took him to a police building. There, he said, they handcuffed him, bound his feet in iron chains, slapped him and stomped on his feet.
His captors lifted his handcuffed hands from the back so he could not sit straight and used his belt to whip his hands. The beatings lasted “a long time” and his left thumb lost feeling, he said.
“How did Guangcheng escape?” police asked him repeatedly.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that Chen Guangcheng was a “free citizen” after his release from jail in 2010, but the walls and guards that penned him in his home, keeping supporters and reporters out, reflect the pervasive informal controls used to throttle dissent in China.
His elder brother’s account illustrates the pressure authorities put on dissidents’ families and the hard line taken against Chen Guangcheng’s. Their treatment has encouraged lawyers and advocates to challenge what they see as the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s stifling of lawful dissent.
A farmer and an odd-job laborer, Chen Guangfu said he gave police the full account of his brother’s escape after they mentioned the names of activists and villagers involved. He also told them he had an obligation to help his younger brother, stressing that he had already completed his sentence and become a “free citizen.”
“I don’t think he’s a criminal. I don’t think I’m in the wrong for helping a free citizen,” he told police.
After police took Chen Guangfu into custody, a second group of men went to his home, and beat his wife and son, he said. His wife later told him uniformed police charged in with shields and rubber truncheons, and resumed beating her and Chen Kegui, who was by then bleeding and crying out for help. It was then that Chen Kegui took a kitchen knife and slashed three officials.
Chen Kegui is being held in a detention center in Yinan, and authorities have barred family and the lawyers they chose from visiting or representing him, his father said.
Police told Chen Kegui’s lawyers that he had been appointed two lawyers from the state-run Yinan legal aid center. Officials at the center said they have no knowledge of the case.
“I think this is unfair and illegal,” said Chen Guangfu, a dark and lanky former high-school teacher. “Based on my understanding of Chen Kegui, he would never refuse the intervention of outside counsel. From Guangcheng’s case, he understands thoroughly that these so-called ‘legal aid lawyers’ are useless.”
Chen Guangfu said he was “extremely pessimistic” about his son’s prospects.
Chen Kegui’s wife, Liu, also present, said she hoped her husband’s case would be treated like “a normal, criminal case.”
Her five-year-old son, Chen Fubin, was back in Shandong.
“He [Chen Kegui] must be heavily injured, I’m worried about his physical state,” she said. “Inside, he might be subject to beatings.”
The two lawyers she chose to represent Chen Kegui challenged the Yinan County Public Security Bureau for “illegal” efforts to deny them access to their client, in a letter to the Yinan police chief published on a microblog on Monday.
Before he left for the US on Saturday, Chen Guangcheng predicted the authorities’ drive to manipulate his nephew’s case would fail and increase public discontent over China’s human rights and legal system.
Chen Guangfu also provided new details on his brother’s escape. The blind Chen Guangcheng left on the morning of April 20, scaled eight walls, some as high as 4m, and slept in a pig sty, he said.
“I tried too to follow his escape route, there were two walls I didn’t dare to scale,” Chen Guangfu said.
The elder Chen said he helped by contacting activists He Peirong (何培蓉) and Guo Yushan (郭玉閃) after learning his brother had left his village. The two activists drove to Taian in Shandong to pick Chen Guangcheng up.
Asked about his brother being in the US, Chen Guangfu said: “So many people have said bad things about the US,” he said. “Someone even said he was like a dog that was kicked out of the US embassy, but ultimately, he ended up in America. So I think the criticisms aren’t justified.”
The Taipei MRT is open all night tonight following New Year’s Eve festivities, and is offering free rides from nearby Green Line stations. Taipei’s 2025 New Year’s Eve celebrations kick off at Taipei City Hall Square tonight, with performances from the boy band Energy, the South Korean girl group Apink, and singers Gigi Leung (梁詠琪) and Faith Yang (楊乃文). Taipei 101’s annual New Year’s firework display follows at midnight, themed around Taiwan’s Premier12 baseball championship. Estimates say there will be about 200,000 people in attendance, which is more than usual as this year’s celebrations overlap with A-mei’s (張惠妹) concert at Taipei Dome. There are
ANNOUNCEMENT: People who do not comply with the ban after a spoken warning would be reported to the police, the airport company said on Friday Taoyuan International Airport Corp on Friday announced that riding on vehicles, including scooter-suitcases (also known as “scootcases”), bicycles, scooters and skateboards, is prohibited in the airport’s terminals. Those using such vehicles should manually pull them or place them on luggage trolleys, the company said in a Facebook post. The ban intends to maintain order and protect travelers’ safety, as the airport often sees large crowds of people, it said, adding that it has stepped up publicity for the regulation, and those who do not comply after a spoken warning would be reported to the police. The company yesterday said that
NEW YEAR’S ADDRESS: ‘No matter what threats and challenges Taiwan faces, democracy is the only path,’ William Lai said, urging progress ‘without looking back’ President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday urged parties across the political divide to democratically resolve conflicts that have plagued domestic politics within Taiwan’s constitutional system. In his first New Year’s Day address since becoming president on May 20 last year, Lai touched on several issues, including economic and security challenges, but a key emphasis was on the partisan wrangling that has characterized his first seven months in office. Taiwan has transformed from authoritarianism into today’s democracy and that democracy is the future, Lai said. “No matter what threats and challenges Taiwan faces, democracy is the only path for Taiwan,” he said. “The only choice
CORRUPTION: Twelve other people were convicted on charges related to giving illegal benefits, forgery and money laundering, with sentences ranging from one to five years The Yilan District Court yesterday found Yilan County Commissioner Lin Zi-miao (林姿妙) guilty of corruption, sentencing her to 12 years and six months in prison. The Yilan District Prosecutors’ Office in 2022 indicted 10 government officials and five private individuals, including Lin, her daughter and a landowner. Lin was accused of giving illegal favors estimated to be worth NT$2.4 million (US$73,213) in exchange for using a property to conduct activities linked to the 2020 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential and legislative election campaigns. Those favors included exempting some property and construction firms from land taxes and building code contraventions that would have required
RSS