Even before the internet, dissidents in exile were able to create networks that provided a lifeline to those back home, writes Index editor Jo Glanville
The desperate plight of Chen Guangcheng is a graphic illustration of how China treats its dissidents. Harassed and intimidated, Chen has spent the past seven years between prison and house arrest since he exposed the government’s forced abortion policy in 2005 (he was awarded the Index freedom of expression award for whistleblowing in 2007). House arrest is a common tactic in China for containing and controlling whistleblowers and activists. In Chen’s case, since his release from prison in 2010, it has meant a life of social isolation and fear. Other current well-known victims include Tibetan poet Tsering Woeser and Ai Weiwei, who famously attempted to turn China’s tactics on their head by installing his own in-house surveillance.
The week’s dramatic events echo the story of celebrated dissident Fang Lizhi, who died last month; Fang also took refuge in the US embassy following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and stayed for more than a year until China allowed him to leave. Fang was one of the most important influences on the Tiananmen generation of young activists and the authorities considered him “the biggest black hand behind the 4 June riots”. In exile in the US for the rest of his life, as well as pursuing his academic career as an astrophysicist, he remained active in speaking out for human rights in China along with other exiles of 1989, including Wang Dan.
The experience of exile for dissidents, despite the continuing possibility for influence, can bring another kind of isolation. “Homelessness, loneliness and despair have almost driven me to self-destruction,” wrote the poet Liu Hongbin on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square. It is only through memory, he has written movingly, that he has made the journey home. Writer Ma Jian, who has written the definitive novel of the Tiananmen generation, Beijing Coma, while in exile, was still able to visit China regularly until last year – a measure of how far the situation has deteriorated. Chen’s desire for “a rest”, as he told Congress, is likely to be more than a short stay.
However, there are networks that can only be built from exile and that have always been a lifeline for dissidents back home, long before Twitter, SMS and Facebook revolutionised the possibilities of making revolution. Under editor George Theiner, a Czech dissident in exile in London, Index on Censorship magazine published the leading lights of Czechoslovakia’s pro-democracy movement in the 80s, most notably Václav Havel, as well as publishing and distributing Polish and Czech samizdat – a vital outlet for opposition activists. When Index’s founding editor Michael Scammell started publishing the most famous dissident of them all, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great man panicked: when he heard that his work was appearing so widely in English, he thought it was the KGB who was circulating his writing as part of a political provocation. But it was the first worldwide publication of much of his work in translation and an immensely important part of circulating the plight of dissidents in the Soviet Union.
Forty years on, Belarusian activists in exile have played a vital role in galvanising opposition to Alexander Lukashenko’s regime. Since the elections in 2010, following the mass arrests and imprisonment of the opposition, some of the leading lights of the pro-democracy movement have settled in London and Warsaw where they have helped to shape a successful European campaign alongside human rights groups. Natalia Kaladia, artistic director of the acclaimed Belarus Free Theatre, had to flee Belarus following her arrest and the intimidation of her family. In a campaign with Index, her new organisation Free Belarus Now, which she runs with Irina Bogdanova, sister of former political prisoner Andrei Sannikov, has helped to persuade Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas to stop doing business with Lukashenko’s regime.
While none would choose exile, Chen is reported as telling the US ambassador that “he wanted to be part of the struggle to improve human rights within China”, thanks to the internet it is now perhaps more possible than it ever was in the days of the carbon copies of samizdat to continue to exert an influence back home.
Jo Glanville is editor of Index on Censorship magazine
In a day of dramatic developments, the blind Chinese lawyer who left the US embassy in Beijing yesterday has called on Barack Obama to do everything possible to let his family leave China.
“I would like to say to (President Obama): Please do everything you can to get our whole family out,” 40-year-old activist Chen Guangcheng told CNN.
Chen, who spent six days under US diplomatic protection, says originally he did not plan to leave China but he was forced to leave the embassy for Beijing’s Chaoyang hospital because US officials told him of threats by Chinese authorities to send his wife and children back to their home in Shandong province — where they were subject to house arrest.
I came [to Chaoyang hospital] because of an agreement. I was worried about the safety of my family. A gang of them have taken over our house, sitting in our room and eating at our table, waving thick sticks around.
They’ve turned our home into a prison, with seven cameras and electric fence all around.
He has also said he hopes to leave the People’s Republic on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s plane when she leaves China after bilateral talks later this week.
US officials said today that they are still trying to assist Chen and denied he was pressured to leave the embassy.
Chen’s jarring account emerged after a spectacularly brave move by his close friend Zeng Jinyan (who wrote for Index about growing support for the dissident here). The activist tweeted yesterday that she had spoken to Chen and and his wife, Yuan Weijing, who said they had received threats of being beaten to death if he left the country.
Chen’s wife told CNN that the family’s life was in danger and that matters had worsened since the activist’s escape. “Right now, we can’t even freely use our phone. I can’t even freely walk out of the hospital,” she said, adding:
After Guangcheng got out, the government was persuading me to stay here. But they were also tightening their grip on me. I became really worried. If they ever get us back home, they would put us in an iron cage.
These developments contrast with US officials’ prior claims yesterday that Chen had planned to remain in China to continue his work by studying law at university, and that the Chinese government had given them assurances of his safety.
In the last the 36 hours the unsettling — and often confusing — story has unravelled into a diplomatic storm between China and the United States. Negotiations had been ongoing since Chen’s dramatic escape to Beijing from over 18 months under house arrest in the village of Dongshigu, Shandong province last week. Clinton said earlier this week that a “constructive relationship” between the two powers “includes talking very frankly about those areas where we do not agree, including human rights”.
Meanwhile, nationalist Chinese tabloid the Global Times said in an editorial today that it was “meaningless” to use Chen’s case to attack China’s human rights, arguing that the country’s progress in improving its human rights record would not be “beleaguered” by such moves:
It is certain that Chen’s case is only an interlude for China’s development. It will not undermine social stability, nor will it hinder the normal development and progress of China’s human rights. China can take a composed attitude when such cases happen again.
Chen, noted for his efforts to expose forced abortions, spent four years in prison on charges of disturbing public order before being placed under house arrest. He won the Index on Censorship whistleblowing award for his activities in 2007.
Marta Cooper is an editorial researcher at Index. She tweets at @martaruco
Update: the Associated Press has spoken via Skype to a close friend of Chen, Zeng Jinyan, who claims that Chinese officials forced the activist to choose between going into exile alone or staying in China with his family. More details as we get them.
Chinese dissident activist Chen Guangcheng has left the US Embassy in Beijing, been treated at a hospital in the city and reunited with his wife, reports said today.
In the first confirmation that the blind legal activist had been housed under US diplomatic protection following his escape from house arrest last week, US ambassador Gary Locke called the Washington Post to say he was with Chen en route to Chaoyang Hospital in east Beijing. Chen is also said to have spoken to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who is due to arrive in Beijing today for bilateral talks, with whom he “shared a mutual admiration”.
State news agency Xinhua said that 40-year-old Chen, a prolific human rights activist known for his campaign against forced abortions in China’s Shandong province, left the embassy “of his own volition” after staying there for six days.
China’s foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin has demanded an apology from the United States, accusing the country of taking a Chinese citizen “via abnormal means” into its embassy and of having “interfered in the domestic affairs of China”.
US officials told Reuters that “this was an extraordinary case involving exceptional circumstances, and we do not anticipate that it will be repeated.” They added that Chen plans to remain in China to continue his work, and that the Chinese government had given them assurances of his safety.
Today’s developments come after several days of sensitive negotiations designed to resolve the activist’s fate ahead of Clinton’s arrival in Beijing. US president Barack Obama signalled his support for Chen yesterday, noting that China would “be stronger” if it were to improve its human rights record. Clinton said that a “constructive relationship includes talking very frankly about those areas where we do not agree, including human rights”.
Chen spent four years in prison on charges of disturbing public order before being placed under house arrest in the village of Dongshigu in September 2010. He fled to the Chinese capital last week and a video was released online in which he claimed he and his family had been tortured by officials.
Whether or not Chen is indeed “a free man”, as one of his lawyers Li Jingsong was quoted as saying today, remains to be seen. “I am highly sceptical in terms of promises about the rule of law,” Beijing-based writer and documentary film-maker Charlie Custer told Index, noting that the government has “virtually a zero per cent track record” of treating Chen according to Chinese law.
He added: “I highly doubt Chen will be allowed to be entirely free; I suspect he’ll be sent back to where he was before. He won’t be allowed to operate as a regular Chinese citizen would and should be.”
“He should have been a free man 18 months ago when he should’ve been released from prison,” said Joshua Rosenzweig, a human rights researcher based in Hong Kong, adding that the Chinese government had a long time to protect the activist.
“They only gave these assurances because of the actions of Chen to escape and because this became a high-profile diplomatic incident,” he said.
The safety of several of Chen’s supporters, such as activist He Peirong (@pearlher) also remains uncertain. He, a Nanjing-based activist and one of Chen’s most prolific supporters, is thought to still be detained after police took her from her home on 27 April for having helped Chen escape house arrest. Chen’s nephew, Chen Kegui, is understood to be in hiding.
“If China was serious about assuring Chen’s safety then they’d release them [his supporters],” Beijing-based writer and documentary film-maker Charlie Custer told Index. “The fact that they’ve not done that speaks volumes as to China’s intentions of how they’ll treat Chen.
“All He Peirong did was drive him to Beijing, why is she being held by police?” Custer added.
Meanwhile, security was tight at the hospital where Chen was being treated. Tom Lasseter, Beijing bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers, tweeted from the scene:
Today’s developments need to be monitored closely to ensure the guarantees promised to Chen are not a one-off, Rosenzweig added. If China does not fulfill its promises, he said, “there is not much in the way of progress.”
“Serious questions need to be asked about nature of political system that places a high priority on maintaining stability above all else, and how that kind of a system makes it possible for local agents to carry out egregious infringements on individual rights for such a long time without intervention,” he said.
Marta Cooper is an editorial researcher at Index. She tweets at @martaruco
Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng has reportedly fled to Beijing after a year and a half under house arrest. Chen is one of China’s best-known human rights activist, famous for his campaign against forced abortions. The blind lawyer spent four years in prison on charges of disturbing public order before being confined to a house in the village of Dongshigu since September 2010. The village was heavily guarded by security officials, those attempting to reach Chen’s house were badly beaten. In a video allegedly filmed after Chen fled, he claims that both he and his family have been tortured by officials.
Even before the internet, dissidents in exile were able to create networks that provided a lifeline to those back home, writes Index editor Jo Glanville