Blind China activist makes mystery “escape”

By Michael Martina and Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – Blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng,

one of China’s most prominent human rights advocates, has escaped from home imprisonment, activists said on Friday, and

there were unconfirmed reports he had taken refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

Chen, a self-schooled legal

advocate who campaigned against forced abortions, had been restricted to his village home in Linyi in eastern Shandong

province since September 2010 when he was released from jail.

His confinement and relentless surveillance with his

family fanned protests by Chinese sympathisers and criticism from foreign governments and activist groups.

Chen’s

reported escape and the furore it has unleashed could add to the headaches of China’s ruling Communist Party, which is

striving to ensure stability and authority before a leadership transition later this year.

It also threatened to

overshadow a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who are due to visit

Beijing next week for the annual “strategic and economic dialogue” between the two countries.

Hu Jia, a human rights

advocate in Beijing who has supported Chen, told Reuters he believed Chen was under U.S. diplomatic protection.

“It’s

clearly understood that his supporters took Chen Guangcheng to the safest place, and our understanding is that the safest

place means the United States Embassy,” said Hu, who was himself jailed for his outspoken criticism of the Chinese

government. “If you ask other embassies whether they have Chen Guangcheng, they will say no. But if you ask the U.S. Embassy,

they say nothing, so we believe he is there.”

The U.S. Embassy and China’s Foreign Ministry both said they had no

immediate comment.

In Washington, the State Department repeatedly declined to answer questions about Chen’s case. “I

don’t have anything for you on that subject,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Bob Fu, president of

the Texas-based religious and political rights advocacy group ChinaAid, said in a statement that Chen was in Beijing and “100

percent safe.”

In a video posted on YouTube, Chen confirmed he had escaped, and asked Premier Wen Jiabao to order an

investigation into the maltreatment of him and his family by local officials.

“It was not at all easy, but I have

escaped,” he said in the video. “Everything that was said on the Internet about the violence directed against me by Linyi,

I’m here to say that it was all true.”

Chen did not say where he was or what his plans were.

“I want Premier

Wen to open a probe into this corrupt behaviour. The money paid by the people in taxes should not be wasted by corrupt local

officials to hurt us,” he added.

While Reuters was not able to authenticate the video, there was scant doubt it was

Chen, wearing his trademark dark glasses and speaking in his halting, Shandong-accented Mandarin Chinese.

Fu said

earlier in a telephone interview that Chen’s wife, daughter and mother were still at the family’s village home, which was

surrounded by authorities after they discovered Chen had disappeared.

“The entire village and government leaders were

stunned by the developments when Chen Guangcheng was not found. So they are surrounding his home,” he said.

‘SCARED

OF REVENGE’

Another activist, He Peirong, told Reuters that Chen had talked with her.

“His spirits are OK, but

he is passing blood and is very weak,” she said. “His hands won’t stop shaking.”

She said Chen was worried about his

family.

“He is really worried about his wife, child and mother now he has escaped. He is scared the guards will take

revenge now he has escaped. The guards have beaten his old mother this year. They broke some of his wife’s bones which have

yet to heal.”

Chen’s fate has become a test of wills, pitting a crackdown on dissent against rights activists who

have rallied around his cause and that of artist Ai Weiwei.

If he is sheltering at the U.S. Embassy, it could thrust

Washington back into the limelight at a sensitive moment, recalling the case of dissident Chinese astrophysicist Fang Lizhi

who took refuge at the U.S. Embassy with his wife following the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown to the outrage of the Beijing

government. Fang eventually settled in the United States and died recently.

Officials in Shandong did not comment

immediately on Chen’s escape.

The news was widely discussed on China’s popular Twitter-like service Weibo, with

users referring to him as “the blind man” to avoid censorship of his name, reflecting his status as a Chinese cult

hero.

“He has escaped from the clutches of the devil,” wrote “Brave to speak.”

“Never has the fate of single

blind man moved the hearts of an entire nation,” added “Jing Huili.”

Phelim Kine, senior Asia researcher for Human

Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, expressed concern about Chen’s health.

“If Chen has successfully

escaped, it comes not a moment too soon as there have been reports that Chen has been in extremely poor health due to severe

multiple beatings by his captors,” Kine said in an email.

Chen angered Shandong officials in 2005 by exposing a

programme of forced abortions as part of China’s one-child policy. He was formally released in September 2010 after four

years in jail on a charge of “blocking traffic.”

Chen and his wife endured a “brutal four-hour beating” by local

authorities last July, ChinaAid has said.

Last year, dozens of supporters were blocked from visiting Chen. Many of

them were beaten by men in plainclothes.

In December, Hollywood actor and “Batman” star Christian Bale was roughed up

by security guards while trying to visit Chen. Bale had been in China to promote a movie with Chinese director Zhang

Yimou.

Guo Yushan, a Beijing-based researcher who has campaigned for Chen’s release, said he believed Chen remained

free as of midday on Friday.

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley in Beijing and Andrew Quinn in Washington; Editing

by Nick Macfie and Peter Cooney)