11/11/2011

Dreaming of a Normal Life in China

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BEIJING — One evening last month, I mentioned the name Chen Guangcheng in a speech I delivered at a university in Qingdao in eastern China. Chen, a well-known human rights lawyer, lives only a few hundred kilometers away from where I was speaking.

His life is anything but normal. As a price for his activism, Chen spent more than four years in prison. He was released in September of last year and promptly committed to house arrest, although officials deny he is a prisoner. For more than a year he has been under 24-hour surveillance by several hundred burly thugs — a prisoner in his own home. Chen, who turns 40 on Saturday, is blind and said to be in poor health.

After the speech a student asked me if I planned to visit Chen. I had never met him but I have felt an affinity for him for a long time: We both have legal backgrounds and I greatly admire his courage. I had talked about Chen on my blog but otherwise my support for him had been feeble. I felt ashamed that I did not respond one way or the other to the student’s question.

My calculations were simple: I don’t want my books banned; I don’t want my name on the government’s sensitive-word Internet filter; I don’t want my upcoming overseas trips jeopardized.

But most of all, I’m scared. I’m scared of being beat up, and I’m scared of losing my freedom. I live in a world in which freedom is scarce, and I treasure it a lot, even if that freedom is pathetically small.

You may ask, is visiting someone really that dangerous? This is a normal question that comes from normal people. But in the abnormal world that is modern China, an innocent visit can be dangerous.

The next day while eating lunch, four otherwise cowardly people found courage in companionship and decided to go to Chen’s village to visit the hero. We set off within an hour.

Early the next morning we arrived in Dongshigu. Near the entrance to the village there were houses filled with men on each side of the unpaved road. A short man wearing a gray-green jacket came out and blocked our way. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Is this Dongshigu village?” I smiled.

Read more at The New York Times

Nov 11, 2011 2:02:41 PM | Activist/Dissident, Current Affairs

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