|
Post by RhodoraO on Mar 19, 2017 22:24:29 GMT
www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/world/asia/christian-bale-attacked-by-chinese-guards.html?ref=worldThe actor Christian Bale was assaulted by government-backed guards on Thursday when he tried to visit a blind lawyer who has been illegally confined to his home in eastern Shandong Province.
The lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, has emerged as a cause célèbre among the country’s rights advocates, dozens of whom have been similarly roughed up when they tried to break through the cordon that local officials have placed around Mr. Chen’s village.
---
The footage of Mr. Bale’s attempted visit is dramatic. In it, he is seen pleading with the men who guard Dongshigu’s entry points and then retreating as they push and punch him. “Why can I not visit this free man?” he asks repeatedly. The men, dressed in thick green winter coats respond with shouts of “Go away.” Even after they have retreated into their car, the group, which included a translator, was chased for 40 minutes by men in a gray van.
“What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is,” Mr. Bale said.
In recent months, scores of Chinese activists have had similar experiences, although some have endured far more violence, sometimes at the hands of uniformed police who the victims had called for assistance.
None of the journalists, diplomats or rights lawyers who have made the journey to Dongshigu have succeeded in meeting Mr. Chen, 40, who has been imprisoned in his home, along with his wife and child, since his release from prison in September 2010.
A self-taught lawyer, Mr. Chen crossed the line from celebrated lawyer to persecuted dissident after he took on the case of thousands of local women who had been the victims of an aggressive family planning campaign that included forced sterilizations and abortions. In 2006, he was sentenced to four-and-a-half years during a trial that his legal defenders described as farcical. The charges included destroying property and organizing a crowd to block traffic, crimes allegedly orchestrated while he was under house arrest.
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Mar 21, 2017 21:51:58 GMT
China Says Christian Bale Should Be Embarrassed After Assault
d. 21 DEC, 2011 artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/china-says-christian-bale-should-be-embarrassed-after-assault/While American audiences struggle to understand the dialogue in the trailer for Christian Bale’s next Batman movie, the Chinese government has expressed itself loud and clear to that “Dark Knight” star, saying that Mr. Bale was trying to “create news” when he tried to visit a detained lawyer in China last week.
Last Thursday, Mr. Bale, who was in China promoting his role in Zhang Yimou’s film “The Flowers of War,” traveled to Shandong Province to visit with the lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, who is blind and has been confined to his home for 15 months. There, Mr. Bale was assaulted by government-backed guards who have similarly prevented other people from entering Mr. Chen’s village, in a scene that was recorded by a CNN camera crew accompanying the actor. Mr. Chen has been a target of the government since taking on the case of thousands of women who were victims of forced sterilizations and abortions.
On Wednesday, Liu Weimin, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, was asked if his country was embarrassed by Mr. Bale’s actions, and Mr. Liu responded that it was Mr. Bale who should be embarrassed.
“If anyone should be embarrassed it’s the relevant actor, not the Chinese side,” Mr. Liu said, according to Reuters. “What I understand is that the actor was invited by the director Zhang Yimou to attend the movie premiere. He was not invited to any village in Shandong to create news or make a film. If he wants to create news, I don’t think that would be welcomed by China.”
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Mar 28, 2017 6:47:44 GMT
The Chinese activist Mr. Chen managed in escaping the house arrest during 2012. Here is a piece on the story and its blocking by the Chinese government, in New York Times: rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/china-blocking-all-mention-of-chen-and-his-daring-escape/?_r=0HONG KONG — The improbable late-night escape of the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng from house arrest in his rural village has thrilled anti-abortion campaigners and human rights groups, while humiliating the security forces who were charged with sealing off Mr. Chen and his family.
“Friends of Mr. Chen, along with people in the Chinese government, say he is now inside the American Embassy in Beijing,” my colleague Andrew Jacobs reports from the capital.
“His escape is nothing less than a miracle,” said Zeng Jinyan, a human rights campaigner.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government, as it presumably negotiates with American officials over Mr. Chen’s immediate future, seems to have issued a gag order on his flight from detention.
There has been no mention of Mr. Chen’s situation by Xinhua, the official state news agency, nor by the state-run newspapers China Daily, People’s Daily or Global Times.
Indeed, in a search of Xinhua’s entire English-language archive, there is only one mention of Mr. Chen — an account in 2007 of his being sentenced to four years and three months in jail for destroying public property. The story refers to Mr. Chen as a “mob organizer” who reportedly broke some office windows “to vent his anger at workers who were carrying out poverty-relief programs.”
Online searches of Mr. Chen’s name also are being blocked inside China, including on the popular Twitter-like service called Weibo. Variations on his initials and the name of his prefecture are also off-limits, along with the words “blind lawyer,” “embassy,” “U.S. embassy” and “consulate.”
Banned searches turn up this message: “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, these search results cannot be shown.”
“Nearly all possible searches have been blocked, and even the Chinese word for ‘blind person,’ or mang’ren (盲人),” writes David Bandurski of the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong.
Mr. Chen, 40, blinded in infancy by an untreated fever, has campaigned for years against the harsh enforcement of the state’s one-child policy in eastern China, alleging that local officials have forced thousands of people to have abortions or undergo sterilization procedures.
The 15-minute video that he recorded about the harsh treatment of him and his family is now available here with English subtitles, and an English-language transcript is on The Shanghaiist site.
In the video, essentially an appeal to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao for justice, Mr. Chen describes the elaborate security system which — until one night last week — had so hermetically kept him a prisoner.
“The whole situation is just so over the top,” he says. “I understand the number of officials and policemen who participate in my persecution adds up to some 100 people.”
And he names names: He specifically identifies about a dozen of the plainclothes guards who keep visitors away, often violently, from Dongshigu village. Christian activists, political supporters, foreign journalists, fellow Chinese lawyers and two U.S. diplomats have been physically driven off by the guards.
“The man who guarded the village entrance and attacked Christian Bale — I understand his name is Zhang Shenghe, an official with our township. He is the so-called ‘Military Coat’ (or ‘PandaMan’) in netizens’ descriptions.”
Mr. Bale, the British actor, was roughed up last year when he tried to visit Mr. Chen with a CNN crew. A burly man in a green, army-style parka led the assault, shown in this video report.
The provocative and Internet-savvy Chinese novelist Murong Xuecun also has written a moving account of his attempt to visit Mr. Chen in October.
As Mr. Murong and three friends approached Lingyi, the largest city near Mr. Chen’s village, they saw a video screen flashing the slogan, “A Civilized People Create a Civilized City.”
In his account of being shoved to the ground and turned away by the Dongshigu guards, Mr. Murong writes, “All I wanted to know was what it takes to visit a person, and I’d gotten my answer: as impossible as walking to the sky.”
He refers to “Believe in the Future,” a bleak and wistful poem from 1968 by Shi Zhi, the pen name of Guo Lusheng, who has been called “China’s Dante.” The poem, circulated in copies written out by hand, became a touchstone for millions of educated urban students sent to work on farms during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s.
Mr. Murong writes:“Almost everyone in our generation has read ‘Believe in the Future':
When cobwebs clog my stove When its dying smoke sighs over poverty I will stubbornly dig out the disappointing ash And write on snowflakes: ‘Believe in the Future.’
This poem was written in 1968 during an abnormal time. That year, the historian Jian Bozan and his wife committed suicide. Tian Han, the lyricist of our national anthem, died in prison. That year, ordinary citizens silently endured a life of injustice.
But the real heroes were the ones who held onto hope, who still believed in the future, who still had faith that the world would turn back to normal.”
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 25, 2021 0:07:17 GMT
A report from WSJ on the happy follow up to this story from 2012: www.wsj.com/articles/BL-SEB-72244Chen Guangcheng, ‘Homeland’ Honored by Human Rights First By Monika Anderson Oct. 25, 2012 6:15 pm ET Last night, at the annual Human Rights First Award dinner, Christian Bale finally met blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, whom he attempted to visit this past December in China. Also, “Homeland” received an award for integrity in entertainment, a particular achievement for its co-creators who experienced controversy with their earlier series, "24." The annual dinner sponsored by Human Rights First was held at Pier Sixty, Chelsea Piers in New York City and hosted by Meredith Vieira. Ms. Vieira began the dinner with a sit-down with the president and CEO of the organization, Elisa Massimino, who encouraged the attendees to roll up their sleeves and do what they could to fight for human rights. While dinner was served, attendees were encouraged to text donations to the organization. Leading up to the event, Human Rights First raised over $2 million. The star of the night was Mr. Chen, a self-taught lawyer who has drawn attention to human rights abuses in China, in one case bringing a class action lawsuit against officials in the Shandong Province for brutal enforcement of the one-child policy. Consequently, he and his family have been subjected to torture and imprisonment by the Chinese government. Mr. Bale had the honor of introducing Mr. Chen and presenting his award. The actor played a clip from his attempt to visit Mr. Chen in December, during which he brought along members of the press. At the time, Mr. Chen was under house arrest and Mr. Bale and the crew were forcibly turned away. Even though they knew they were unlikely to meet Mr. Chen, Mr. Bale hoped to draw attention to Mr. Chen’s story. Mr. Bale joked that his efforts were successful to some, while others just enjoyed seeing a “stupid actor get roughed up.” Chen Guangcheng embraced Mr. Bale and was moved to tears when accepting the award. According to Mr. Chen in remarks read by Mr. Bale (Mr. Chen is learning English), the Chinese Communist Party has spent more than $10 million to discredit his efforts. Mr. Chen was able to escape house arrest and flee to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in April, but his nephew remains in prison for defending himself against government officials during a police raid. Mr. Chen is now studying law at New York University.
|
|