Blind Chinese Activist Faces Familiar Choice

After leaving the U.S. embassy and checking right into a Chinese hospital, blind Chinese activist, Chen Guangcheng, could have lost his best chance to go away the rustic. Other Chinese dissidents have chosen exile to make sure their family's safety, however the choice carries drawbacks for his or her advocacy work.

Exiled activist

APWang Dan, one of many student leaders inside the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, takes part in a candlelight vigil for protesters crushed in the course of the protests on the Liberty Square of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, in Taipei, Taiwan, June 4, 2011.Wang Dan is one such activist. As one of the vital visible leaders of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing, he served two jail terms. In April 1998, he was released on medical parole, and exiled to the U.S., where he remained politically engaged.

Wang says after his first jail term in 1993, authorities offered him the prospect to depart China but he decided against it.

“I thought i may still do something for China from within,” he said. “At the time most individuals have been arrested, or didn't dare to speak. i believed it was best for me at the very least to maintain talking.”   

But in 1998, facing an 11-year jail sentence, Wang realized that his future in China would have meant only confinement.

“I could do nothing to advertise democracy in China,” he explained, “I thought it best to visit the U.S. and improve myself."

Wang has since earned a doctoral degree in history at Harvard University. He's now an assistant professor at Tsinghua University in Taiwan and was blacklisted from ever returning to the mainland.

Chen's story

A self-taught lawyer, Chen Guangcheng collected testimony of forced abortions and sterilizations in his own province, Shandong, where local family planning officials were using coercive measures to satisfy the necessities of China's one child policy.

Chen's attempts to bring a category action lawsuit on behalf of female victims angered authorities, who responded by giving him a four-year jail sentence on charges of damaging property and organizing a mob. Even after he was released from jail, local officials illegally kept him under tightly-guarded house arrest, until last week, when with the aid of supporters he fled his village and went to Beijing.

U.S. officials say throughout the six days Chen Guangcheng took shelter contained in the American embassy, he expressed no intention of leaving China.

Stay or leave?

Joshua Rosenzweig, an independent human rights researcher based in Hong Kong, recognizes that a choice either way carries downsides.

“Working throughout the Chinese context involves a good deal of risk,” he said, adding that activists should be careful of their efforts and accept only very gradual change.

For those dissidents who choose safety and flee the rustic, there's the recent problem of remaining engaged with people inside China.

“There is a traditional view among many who once an activist, or a dissident leaves the borders of China they only, become irrelevant,” Rosenzweig said.

Lately the net has helped narrow this gap and fasten activists to their peers inside China, despite authorities' ability to chop off and monitor electronic communications.

Unusual offer

Before leaving the U.S. embassy, Chen was reportedly offered what activists have said will be a highly unusual deal during which he could live freely in China, and enroll right into a university without government harassment. American officials said they might monitor the placement and ensure the Chinese failed to backtrack from its commitment to maintain Chen and his family out of harm's way.

Human Rights Watch's Sophie Richardson points out that Beijing is attempting to assure rights that Chen, as a Chinese citizen, should have already got.

“The guarantees which have been offered as much as him are ridiculous inside the sense that these are rights and freedoms that already must be bound to him under existing Chinese laws,” she said. "Let's point a finger where it belongs, that is back on the government, which continues in a single way or another, which it does with all activists, to threaten them over their work.”

Wang Dan, who recently co-signed a letter asking the Chinese government to provide exiled dissidents permission to go to China, agrees that Beijing's reassurances maybe short-lived.

“The authorities might say that they may not harass him, but i suspect nonetheless that there can be covert spying and interference in his life. He's going to not be able to do what he really desires to,” Wang said.

Other Chinese Dissidents Who've Left Their Homeland

	Fang Lizhi: The leading astrophysicist stayed at U.S. Embassy for 13 months after China's 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square. He left China in 1990 and died this year within the U.S.
	Wei Jingsheng: The democracy activist flew to the U.S. in 1997 after greater than 14 years in prison.
	Rebiya Kadeer: Convicted of endangering state security, the Uighur rights activist now lives inside the U.S.
	Wu'er Kaixi: The scholar leader fled China with assistance from a secret network after the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.
	Liao Yiwu: Known for "The Corpse Walker" interviews with people at the margin of Chinese society, he fled to Germany in 2011
	Yu Jie: Authored a book critical of Premier Wen Jiabao and left for the U.S. in 2012 after being detained repeatedly and beaten.

From WhatNewsToday.net

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