In interview Chen Guangcheng reports no progress on passport
By Dave Andrusko
In a brief interview with the Washington Post Wednesday, Chen Guangcheng, the blind pro-life activist who exposed China’s brutal policy of forced abortion and forced sterilization, again seemed to be speaking in the language he has perfected that alternates hope and less optimistic candor.
On the one hand, he told the Post’s Keith B. Richburg that he expects to be allowed to leave the country to study in the United States. Chen has been offered fellowships from the University of Washington in Seattle and New York University. On the other hand, in the next breath, he tells Richburg that the passports he and his wife hold have expired and that he has not been told whether they can be renewed. “He said no Chinese officials have come to discuss the matter with him,” Richburg wrote.
Likewise, Chen reported what Richburg characterized as “some small signs of progress.”
“He said that since Monday, his children have been allowed a half hour each morning and afternoon to play in the hospital’s outdoor courtyard. He said his wife ‘still has trouble going out, but she has made it,’ noting that she has periodically been allowed outside to meet with U.S. diplomats. He himself has been permitted only one brief visit with the diplomats on Friday, despite officials’ earlier assurances that they would be allowed regular access tohim.”
At the same time, police and plainclothes guards have blocked friends, supporters, and journalists from entering the hospital to see him, and U.S. diplomats have been able to speak with Chen only by phone. “Journalists have been warned that they risk expulsion from China if they try to enter the hospital to see Chen,” Richburg reports.
Chen clearly continues to fear for his family, particularly his brother and his brother’s wife. “I haven’t talked to them for several days,” he told the Post. Richburg writes, “He said he was able to speak to his mother after authorities in Linyi city installed a landline in her home.”
Likewise at the same time Chen says he expects Beijing officials to make good on what he says is their pledge to investigate his unlawful detention, “’There’s no news’ on it.” Then Chen says, hopefully, “But this thing has been publicized. It will affect their credibility if they don’t start an investigation.”
He added, “If I didn’t believe them, I never would have left the U.S. Embassy.”
Reggie Littlejohn, President, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, testified May 3 before the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China at a hearing held by Co-Chairman Chris Smith (R-NJ). She said she was asked to respond to two questions, beginning with, “What is the underlying issue that got Chen Guangcheng detained?”
She pointed out that much of the mainstream media had left out “why is there such intense persecution, what is it that set off the Chinese Communist Government party against Chen Guangcheng?” And the answer Littlejohn gave was, “The fact that he was the one person in China who dared to stand up against the One Child Policy.”
It is noteworthy that the Post’s story says nothing about why Chen served more than four years in prison and 19 months of house arrest before escaping April 22.
Littlejohn has written (in “The REAL War Against Women–Forced abortion and Gendercide in China”),
“Chinese women are being dragged out of their homes, strapped down to tables and forced to abort babies that they want, up to the ninth month of pregnancy. Sometimes the women themselves die, along with their full term babies. Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, no one supports forced abortion, because it’s not a choice.
“Equally appalling, baby girls are being selected for termination. According to one UN estimate, up to 200 million women are missing in the world today due to gendercide, the sex-selective abortion of baby girls, mostly in China and India. Anyone who cares about women’s rights must be heartbroken and incensed by this massive attack against females.
“China’s One Child Policy causes more violence against women and girls than any other official policy on earth. It is systematic, institutionalized violence against women.”
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