Opening Statement on the Plight of Chen Guangcheng and Extended Family to a House of Representatives Foreign
Affairs Subcommittee on Human Rights in China
delivered 15 May 2012,
U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, D.C.
[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio but with some editing
accommodations for the sake of clarity. All substantive content preserved.]
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you, the Honorable
Congressman, for your continuous support on behalf of a Chinese family.
While we
are still waiting for a real progress report about Chen and his close family
members, any plan, or about the issuance of a passport from the Chinese
Government, today I want to focus on the plight of his extended family members
and his supporters. And especially, I am deeply concerned about Chen's nephew,
Chen Kegui, and I want to really give you an updated report after talking with
at least two of his lawyers and another legal representative in the past few
days.
Here's the chronology for what had happened to Mr. Chen Kegui. Of course, he has
been under criminal detention since April 30th; and then on May the 9th, he was
formally arrested with the trumped-up charge called "intentional homicide.''
This is [how] the so-called homicide happened. After
Chen Guangcheng's escape
last month, the local official who has been directing the persecution of Chen,
the town mayor Zhang Jian, led a group of people in a raid on the home of Chen's
brother,
Chen Guangfu, that began at about 11:30 p.m. on April 26th and
continued to dawn. Without showing any IDs, they broke down the door, and jumped
over the walls of Chen Guangfu's home, and then seriously beat Chen Guangfu and
then his wife, Ren Zongju.
And their son, Chen Kegui, thought some bandits had come to rob them. So, he was
himself -- after he walked out of his bedroom -- he was violently attacked for
at least three hours, and according to the eyewitnesses and his own report, he
was bleeding on his face, on his head; and out of those circumstances, [it] was
purely out of self-defense and witnessing how his parents were violently beaten
up, he injured several of the attackers with a kitchen knife.
And then early morning of April 27th, he himself, in a conversation recorded by
a reporter for 50 minutes, he was talking [about] how he was violently attacked.
He said he was waiting. He called the Chinese police, telephoned like the
equivalent of 9-1-1. He want[ed] to surrender himself, but after waiting for a
few hours, he was afraid [for] his life, so he walked away to another
neighboring county, actually [in] the nearby Province of Jiangsu -- the county's
name is called the Xinyi county -- and there he was trying to surrender to the
neighboring province.
And at least from my conversation with one of his lawyers, the attorney Liu
Weiguo from Jinan, the capital city of Shandong Province, on April 29th, that in
a conversation he had with attorney Liu Weiguo, he said, "You know, I was
waiting to go to that detention center to surrender [myself]." And then on April
30th, obviously, he was under criminal detention, and later on he was charged
with intentional homicide.
And
almost all of the lawyers who were waiting to handle Chen Kegui's's case
have lost their freedom of movement, or had their lawyer's license confiscated
or held by the authorities. And some of them had been simply kidnapped.
And attorney Liu Weiguo is losing his freedom of movement, so he's not allowed
to travel to either Beijing or Shandong at all. And another attorney from
Guangzhou, attorney Wu Chen2
only after he -- the same day when he announced he [would] be the attorney for
Chen Kegui, his license was announced [as] being held by the Chinese Government,
so he's not allowed to represent Mr. Chen Kegui's case. Based on the experience
of Mr. Chen Guangcheng's trial, or pretrial, in 2005, we cannot have any
confidence that Mr. Chen Kegui will receive any fair trial.
And let me just talk a little bit [about] a few other cases, about those
supporters of Mr. Chen who had experienced tremendous persecution in the past
week or so just simply for being associated with Mr. Chen, or [for raising]
awareness. And one of [them], his name is
Lu Haitao, a netizen from Beijing. And
just because he tried to visit Mr. Chen, and he and his wife, who was pregnant
with two months pregnancy [sic], and kept being harassed and invited -- forced
to have tea with the public security officers since April -- since May the 10th.
And then because of that harassment and the threat, on May the 13th, Mr. Lu
Haitao's wife, Yang Lanlian, had a miscarriage. Their two-month-old baby is
gone.
And, of course, the other individuals like Mr. Jiang Tianyong, with whom he
testified before you, Mr. Chairman, was beaten and was also removed from Beijing
as well.
And there['s] another individual whose name is Song Ze. He's a member of Beijing's
Gongmeng NGO who has been just raising awareness for Mr. Chen. But he, on May
the 6th this month, he had been under criminal detention. Right now, he's being
held at the Fengtai District detention center right now [sic].
And another activist, Ms. Liu Guohui, who has been an advocate and also a
constant visitor, or trying to visit Mr. Chen in the past couple of years, and
her passport recently was even declared invalid. So, she has no way to even
travel overseas.
And other lawyers, most of them who are not able to have any freedom of
movement.
So, I'm very, very concerned that the Chinese Government, especially the local
leading authorit[ies], will make trumped-up charges; based on this trumped-up
charge, [they] will make a fake trial and expeditiously hand him a very severe
sentence and possibly, if he's convicted, he could be sentenced to death.
Where is the way out for Chen Guangcheng? Despite the fact that the United
States and China have reached an apparent agreement and are committed to Chen
Guangcheng's freedom and security, and Chen Guangcheng remains under de facto
house arrest in the Chaoyang Hospital, and I talk with him pretty much twice a
day, until last night and this morning we lost contact. And all the visitors are
barred, including the U.S. diplomatic representatives are not allowed to visit
him [sic], and some of the Chinese supporters and friends who just tried to
visit him were barred, or tailed and beaten.
So, all of this shows that the implementation of the agreement and the
realization of the commitments are far more important than the agreement and the
commitments themselves.
I hope that Congress will do more in monitoring and urging the Administration to
ensure the civil rights of Chen Guangcheng; and [that] his family members are
protected by the law.
Chen Guangcheng was allowed to enter the U.S. Embassy and
member[s] of the Obama Administration, including the Assistant Secretar[ies]
Kurt Campbell and Michael Posner, and the State Department legal advisor Harold
Koh, and and Ambassador Gary Locke, all made great active efforts, and, of course,
sacrificed loss of sleep during the negotiation time.
And although some aspects
of the events that followed certainly were
not handled properly by the
Administration, we are nonetheless pleased to see that high-level American and
Chinese officials have promised to help Chen Guangcheng and his family come to
the United States so they can rest and have further studies [at] a U.S.
institution. And this shows that our country recognized that it is responsible,
you know, for the outcome of the fate of Chen Guangcheng.
We hope that Member[s] of Congress can provide all the tools that the
Administration need[s] to back their commitment and to follow through, and we
are certainly looking forward [to] that day when Chen and his wife and two
children [will be able] to touch the soil in the United States of America very
soon, hopefully.
1
Official U.S. government transcript specifies the dates as May 12th and May
13th.
2Spelling and indentity unclear.
2Spelling and identity unclear. The official U.S. Government
transcript denotes the name as "Wu Chen." The speaker's phrasing suggests a
spelling of "Chen Wu Chen" or "Chen Wuchen."
Original Text Source: Congress.gov
Original Video of Speech Source: C-SPAN.org
Original Audio of Amb. Locke's Remarks:
https://uschinadialogue.georgetown.edu/podcasts/gary-locke
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Video Note 2: Lighting and color adjusted. AI upscaled from 576p to 720p
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