US diplomat flies into Beijing for talks over blind dissident Chen Guangcheng

April 29th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

In a video posted online following his escape, Mr Chen called on Premier Wen
Jiabao to prosecutor local officials who have subjected him and his family
to repeated beatings during his time under house arrest, for his family to
be protected and Premier Wen to act to end official corruption in China.

It is highly improbable that China’s leaders will accept being dictated to by
such a high-profile dissident and a man they regard as an enemy of the
state. Nor is Mr Chen likely to agree to whatever offer they make.

“I think Chen would prefer to stay in China but only if the Chinese
government agree to the demands he made in the video he released on Friday,”
said Nicholas Bequelin, the senior Asia researcher at the Hong Kong office
of Human Rights Watch.

“I don’t think it is possible to convince him to agree to any deal
proposed by the authorities. And he won’t want to stay in China if it means
returning to house arrest and being held in permanent limbo. In China, house
arrest can go on for a lifetime.”

At the same time, Washington is well aware that caving into pressure from the
Chinese to return Mr Chen to their custody would have a disastrous effect on
public opinion both in the US and worldwide.

“It would be politically very difficult for the US to hand Chen back
without his agreement. They can’t just frogmarch him out of the embassy,”
said Mr Bequelin.

Mrs Clinton has repeatedly called for Mr Chen’s release in the past, while
with an election looming in November President Barack Obama is already under
fire in the US for not doing more to stand up to the Chinese over their
refusal to make their currency more competitive.

One possible compromise is for Washington to request that Mr Chen, who has
been blind since early childhood and who injured himself in his escape, be
allowed to travel to America for medical treatment. The only other dissident
to have taken refuge in the US embassy, the astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, was
allowed to leave for the US on medical grounds despite his role in the 1989
pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.

Any deal is likely to include Mr Chen’s wife and daughter, who remain in the
family home along with his mother in the village of Dongshigu in eastern
Shandong Province. The house is now surrounded by local authorities and it
is impossible to contact them. Far more uncertain, though, is the future
fate of Mr Hu and the other activists who aided Mr Chen in his escape. All
have been detained, along with Mr Chen’s brother and nephew. At least one
other member of his family is thought to be on the run.

Illiterate until his early twenties, Mr Chen taught himself law and rose to
prominence in 2005 for exposing a policy of forced abortions and
sterilisations in Shandong Province. Imprisoned in 2006 for four years on
trumped-up charges, he was placed under house arrest immediately after his
release in September 2010.