Activist Couples with Courage

1.

Mr. Chen Guangcheng became blind after a severe childhood fever. Nonetheless, the peasant boy from a village in Yi'nan County, Shandong Province in east China went on to train himself as a legal expert. Energetic in his late thirties, he had since helped people, similarly disabled as himself, to obtain government benefits that had never come to realize for many living in the countryside.

In 2003, the central government ordered cancellation of all agricultural taxations, which cut short the income for many of a local government. Consequently, as reported by Chinese agriculture scholars from various locations, a new phenomenon arose, whereupon local government officials turned their attention in extracting illicit extra income from the peasants to increasing penalty fees on supposed "violation" of China's family planning policy.

Chen Guangchang was caught by the suddenly increasing coercive approach local officials adapted against peasant women and their families in his home town. Working with warm support from his young wife, Yuan Weijing, he gathered huge amount of information on systematic abuse of power, against poor peasants and their families, by the family planning authorities in Yi'nan County and exposed the case to the national family planning office in Beijing in summer 2005. He was awarded by the national office with honor, covered by newspaper articles and television programs. Eventually, he was named one of the one hundred people who influenced the world in 2005 by the Times Magazine in the U.S. in early 2006.

By then, Chen had lost his freedom of movement for months. Local police had placed him under house-arrest since August 2005.

Chen Guangcheng has been formally arrested in summer 2006, being charged for "obstructing public traffic and damaging public property" in March 2006, when he was still under house-arrest and followed step by step by police whenever he left his home.

He was tried earlier this year and retried on November 27. A sentence of four year and three month has been uphold by the second trial.

While Chen was taken away, Yuan Weijing has stood up to speak to the outside world on Chen's behalf.

Speaking out truth to the outside world - this is what the Chinese regime fears the most.

To make a long story short, after Chen's case was retried, Yuan was taken by police for "questioning." Hours later, she was spotted being dragged out of a police car and thrown to a dirt ditch outside her village, unconscious. She's been hospitalized for exhaustion.

Luckily for Chen, a group of courageous lawyers from Beijing have taken up his case and vowed to fight for justice for him to the last minute. Chen Guangcheng, Yuan Weijing and the lawyers have all agreed they will appeal the case at court of higher levels.

2.

Unlucky for Chen, the most famous and outspoken lawyer coming to his aid earlier this year has disappeared behind the bars himself.

This is Gao Zhisheng, who, too, self-taught himself to become a licensed lawyer and was once honored as one of the top ten best lawyers in China, most of all for his achievements to win huge compensations for poor families, without charging them legal service fees. Actually, he helped many of the poor families with money from his own pocket.

Gao was taken away by police in August, when he was preparing for Chen Guangcheng's initial trial, while taking a break to visit his sister's family that is also in Shandong, a province located between of Beijing and Shanghai, along China's northern coastline.

The scene was rather dramatic, as a group of men rushed into the courtyard of Gao's sister's home, putting a black hood over Gao's head, dragging him into a car and driving away, without giving any legal document to his relatives, nothing to the effect of an arrest warrant.

Since then, he has been held without the permission to see a lawyer and with only one meeting with his wife. It has been nearly four months.

Worst of all, his whole family has been harassed constantly since he was taken away. His thirteen-year daughter was followed by three police members continuously, at home and on campus. They are sitting outside her classroom as well as following her to the campus restroom every single time. They have also taken insulting the poor girl as their pastime.

Nowadays in China a suspect arrested by police is entitled by law to hire defense lawyer(s), as long as the documents are signed by her- or him-self or the family members of the concerned. The Chinese State Security Ministry (SSM), having blocked all contacts to Mr. Gao and put his wife and children under virtual house-arrest, also set out to block his family members in northern Shaanxi Province from signing any legal documents. The whole episode reads like a detective story, albeit more by a second rank author than a master-piece (unlike the one being investigated by the Scot Yard in London at the moment, concerning Russian interest).

Thanks for firm support from his brothers, nephews, and long-time friends, Gao has got legal support from one of China's top lawyers, Mr. Mo Shaoping, who has represented many civil activists and political dissidents in the past two decades. Unfortunately, Mr. Mo has not been able to secure a meeting with Mr. Gao. The authorities have bluntly defied legal requirements stipulated by China's laws to grant such a meeting as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, let me come to the other key figure referred in the title of this blog entry. This is Ms. Geng He, Mr. Gao Zhisheng's wife.

Geng He has been suffering from police coercion, ever since her husband was taken away in August.

Her home was not only raided by police repeatedly, it was simply occupied by them - several of them, moved in to stay there on shift. Her daughter, mentioned above, and her three-year-old son have been living under constant harassment for past months. When her daughter couldn't take it any longer and ran to a friend's home, Geng He was under tremendous police pressure to bring the girl back - under the name of behaving for the sake of her husband's uncertain fate.

So, she weighed the options in hand and kept silent, not contacting any of the family's old friends in the small but comradely community of Chinese civil activists. She, as the best a Chinese woman could think and do, decided to take all the pressure on her own, simply hoping this will help to secure relatively lenient conditions for her husband suffering in the hands of the SSM.

We would not have learned all of the above, had it not been the physical assault on her a week earlier. She went to shopping and, as might be expected, brought with her at least three "tails" of the plaincloth police. When she protested - not against the "tails" per ce - that the police walked right into her back at every turn, two of them, both tall and strongly built, started hitting her on the face and holding her back by twisting her arms. She ended up with a bleeding mouth, shaking teeth, bloody face and injured finger-nails.

3.

This incident broke the ice. Geng He telephoned their old friend, Mr. Hu Jia.

Now, the world has the evidence. Shall we add that all of these happened when it was the World Day to protect women from violence?

Mr. Hu Jia is the husband of Ms. Zeng Jinyan, whose blog I wrote about in September. Another courageous couple, loving and intelligent.

I am proud of China, for I am proud of the wonderful Chinese couples:

Ms. Yuan Weijing and Mr. Chen Guangcheng;
Ms. Geng He and Mr. Gao Zhisheng;
Ms. Zeng Jinyan and Mr. Hu Jia.