In China, human rights activists report being attacked by some 100 thugs Sunday when they tried to visit activist Chen Guangcheng, who has been illegally confined to his house.
Beijing
Liu Li knew he might not be able to get to see the blind barefoot lawyer Chen Guangcheng on Sunday. After all, Mr. Chen, a persistent thorn in the Chinese government’s side, has been under heavily guarded house arrest for more than a year. But Mr. Liu did not expect to return on crutches from his attempted visit.
In this undated file photo released by his supporters, blind activist Chen Guangcheng, right, sits in a village in China.
“About seven or eight men rushed up to me, kicked me to the ground, stole my cellphone, smashed my ankle and knocked me out,” Liu recalled Tuesday. “And the police did nothing when I reported what had happened.”
Liu was one of a group of around 40 activists who were attacked and beaten by more than 100 thugs on Sunday afternoon outside the village of Dongshigu in the eastern province of Shandong where Chen has been illegally locked up in his house with his family since being released from jail in September last year.
“I did not think the situation was so dark,” said Liu. “There is no law in that area.”
The violence marked the second weekend in a row that unidentified thugs have violently broken up efforts by human rights activists and ordinary citizens to visit Chen in a burgeoning campaign to win his freedom.
“Though it is extremely costly for the activists, [the campaign] is bringing a lot of attention to Chen’s case and there are chances that it could ultimately succeed if the pressure continues,” suggests Nicolas Bequelin, a China analyst with Human Rights Watch.
Chen has been under round-the-clock guard in his home village since being released at the end of a 51-month jail sentence he had incurred on charges of disrupting traffic. Human rights activists say the real reason he was imprisoned was his vigorous defense of women who had been forcibly sterilized in abuses of China’s one child policy.
Instead of being freed, Chen was put under house arrest with his wife and daughter, and forbidden to contact the outside world. Local and foreign activists doing their best to monitor his situation say they fear he has been regularly beaten.
Foreign journalists and European diplomats are among those who have been violently turned back when they have tried to visit Chen, and in recent weeks a growing number of courageous Chinese activists have risked being beaten up or detained trying to reach his house.
Read more at The Christian Science Monitor
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