By Dave Andrusko

In this image made from video, blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng is seen on a video posted to YouTube Friday, April 27, 2012 by overseas Chinese news site Boxun.com
Blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng escaped his house arrest in Shandong province last Sunday with reports that he made his way to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Chen, a self-taught lawyer, had been under house arrest for 16 months after serving more than four years in prison.
According to CBS News, “Singapore newspaper Lianhe Zaobao reported that Chen had entered the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Thursday evening, citing unnamed sources. Phone calls to embassy officials remain unanswered and the security presence outside the building was the same as usual on Friday morning.”
Hu Jia, another prominent activist and friend of the Chen family, told the Washington Post, “As far as I know, he is in the U.S. Embassy, the safest place in China,” adding “He is in the U.S. Embassy, or under the shelter of diplomats at least. I’m not sure if he’s going to ask for political asylum or not. I don’t know if he still wants to stay in China.”
According to pro-life Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ) Chen learned of forced abortions and sterilizations in Shandong’s Linyi’s prefecture. “When Chen investigated and intervened with a class action suit on behalf of women in Linyi City who suffered horrific abuse under China’s one child per couple policy, he was arrested, detained and tortured.” In June 2006 Chen was sentenced to four years and three months in prison.
The Post’s Keith Richbourg reports, “Following his release in September 2010, he was taken to his farmhouse in Dongshigu village and kept under an unofficial kind of house arrest, surrounded by armed thugs in plain clothes who prevented Chen and his wife from leaving and brutally blocked journalists and activists from going to see him.”
Following his escape, an incredibly dramatic YouTube video was posted in which Chen “called on Premier Wen Jiabao to investigate his case and protect his family,” according to the Post.
“I am now free. But my worries have not ended yet,” Chen said in a video recorded this week. However he expressed concern that his escape “might ignite a violent revenge against my family.”
According to NPR Chen detailed the brutal beatings by local officials in his appeal to Premier Wen Jiabao. He said
“Dozens of men broke into my house and beat my wife up. They held her down on the floor and covered her with a quilt. Then they punched and kicked her for several hours. They also beat me violently.”
Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, testified last December before The Congressional-Executive Commission on the People’s Republic of China, a bipartisan panel made up of Members of the House and Senate and Presidential appointees serving in the Obama Administration. On Friday she said
“We are grateful that Chen is no longer under house arrest, but we are concerned about his safety and that of his family. We call upon Secretary of State Hillary Clinton specifically to raise Chen’s case during her visit to Beijing May 3-4. Indeed, we call upon the entire international diplomatic community to make urgent, official interventions on behalf of Chen with the Chinese government. We call upon NGOs [Non-Governmental Organizations] and concerned citizens the world over strongly to support this great hero during his hour of need.”
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