Obama sells out blind pro-life activist to Chinese Communist

[Bill Whatcott]

Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, was pressured to leave American embassy. Probably after behind the scenes negotiating where the Americans did what they could to keep their trade deals going unfettered, while agreeing to throw Mr. Chen under the bus.

“The embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me in the hospital, but this afternoon as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone,” Mr. Chen told CNN by phone.

I am not surprised the Obama administration sold out this guy. The Obama administration has accumulated a nasty record of using state coercion to persecute pro-life activists in the US, they would not try too hard to save the life of one who exposes forced, late term abortion in China. Saying the administration was "duped" is too generous. They are not stupid. Why not say the truth, a blind China man meant nothing to them, when deals could be made with a communist government that still uses slave labour.
Bill Whatcott

Goodspeed Analysis: Activists fear U.S. may have been duped in deal to hand Chen Guangcheng over to China
Peter Goodspeed May 2, 2012
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... -to-china/

After a week-long standoff that threatened to derail top-level diplomatic talks, Chinese and U.S. officials appeared to reach an agreement Wednesday to allow blind dissident Chen Guangcheng to leave the U.S. embassy, reunite with his family and continue to live freely in China.

But the agreement, carved out during four days of tense negotiations, apparently unravelled within hours of Mr. Chen being escorted to a local hospital by U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke.

Chinese officials refuse to acknowledge the existence of any understanding and gave no public guarantee of Mr. Chen’s safety, while Chinese dissidents angrily question whether Mr. Chen left of his own free will or was coerced by Chinese government threats against his family.

One news report said that within hours of leaving the safety of the U.S. embassy, Mr. Chen said he only left because Chinese officials had threatened to beat his wife to death.

According to the Associated Press, Mr. Chen said in an interview from his hospital room that he now fears for his safety and wants to leave the country.

The delicate diplomatic duet that was supposed to have defused the crisis caused by Mr. Chen’s escape last week from informal house arrest in rural Shandong province and his seeking asylum at the U.S. embassy in Beijing may now become a public relations nightmare.

Something may have changed the moment Mr. Chen was in the custody of Chinese officials. Human rights activists are raising concerns U.S. diplomats may have been duped into handing Mr. Chen over.

“I am increasingly getting the sense that the reassurances the U.S. got from China over Chen’s future were less than they make it sound,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based senior Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch.

“I’m somewhat surprised by the U.S. government’s willingness to accept the Chinese government’s assurances or even to get Hillary Clinton to work for Chen’s safety in the long term. It seems they’ve taken a huge risk with this.”

The incident risks becoming a huge embarrassment to the U.S. with Mr. Chen reportedly telling CNN that U.S. officials pushed him to leave the embassy.

“The embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me in the hospital, but this afternoon as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone,” Mr. Chen told CNN by phone.

“I would like to say to President Obama — please do everything you can to get our family out.”

Earlier Wednesday, U.S. officials had reported that Mr. Chen, a self-taught “barefoot lawyer,” who campaigned against the forced abortions and sterlizations that are part of China’s one-child policy, had agreed to leave the shelter of the U.S. embassy after Chinese officials offered a series of unprecedented assurances.

According to officials involved in the negotiations, the agreement would have allowed Mr. Chen to relocate to another city to attend university while continuing to live in China free of harassment.

The U.S. officials say they were assured they could check in on Mr. Chen to see if he was still being treated fairly.

They stressed that Mr. Chen “made clear from the beginning that he wanted to remain in China, and that he wanted his stay in the United States Embassy to be temporary.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to Mr. Chen by telephone before he left the embassy Wednesday and U.S officials said Mr. Chen told her in broken English: “I want to kiss you.”

Mr. Locke accompanied Mr. Chen to the nearby Chaoyang Hospital, where he was to receive a check-up for injuries he suffered during his escape before being reunited with his wife and two children, including a son who he has not seen in two years.

Ms. Clinton, who arrived in China Wednesday, along with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, for an annual two-day “strategic and economic dialogue” with top Chinese officials, issued a statement saying: “I am pleased that we were able to facilitate Chen Guangcheng’s stay and departure from the U.S. embassy in a way that reflected his choices and our values.

“Mr. Chen has a number of understandings with the Chinese government about his future, including the opportunity to pursue higher education in a safe environment.

“Making these commitments a reality is the next crucial task. The United States government and the American people are committed to remaining engaged with Mr. Chen and his family in the days, weeks, and years ahead.”

Mr. Chen’s lawyer, Li Jinsong, also told reporters he had talked to his client by phone and said Mr. Chen was “very happy and wants to hug all his friends”.

Within hours, however, friends of Mr. Chen were reporting they were unable to visit him in hospital and had been turned away by police guarding the hospital’s VIP wing.

Zeng Jinyan, a Beijing activist and wife of Mr. Chen’s best friend, released a message on Twitter claiming Mr. Chen did not leave the U.S. embassy of his own accord but only after his wife and children were told they would be sent back to Shandong province.

According to the Texas-based religious rights advocacy group ChinaAid, Ms. Zeng’s Twitter message reads: “Guangcheng called me and told me that he didn’t say, according to media, ‘I want to kiss you’ to Secretary Clinton. What he actually said was ‘I want to see you.’”

Later she tweeted: “Chen Guangcheng told me for the first time that his whole family wanted to leave.”

For its part China’s foreign ministry is demanding an apology from the United States for sheltering Mr. Chen in the first place.

“What the U.S. needs to do is to stop misleading the public and stop making every excuse to shift responsibility and conceal its own wrongdoing,” foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said.

He insisted Washington should not “interfere” in China’s domestic affairs and urged U.S. officials to “take necessary measures to prevent a similar incident.”

The confusion and controversy surrounding Mr. Chen has the potential to derail U.S.-China relations just as U.S. President Barack Obama is entering a re-election campaign and as China’s leaders are redoubling efforts to suppress dissent ahead of a wholesale generational leadership change slated for October.

Having become something of a cult figure for Chinese dissidents through his original escape, Mr. Chen could rapidly become something of a political martyr internationally.

[Bill Whatcott]

Chinese Activist 'Very Disappointed' in the U.S., Says Officials Lied to Him
MAY 2 2012, 9:33 PM ET 86
http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... im/256675/

Chen Guangcheng, who left the U.S. embassy in Beijing this morning, portrays American officials as having manipulated him to encourage his departure.

A little over 12 hours after blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng was released from the U.S. embassy in Beijing, to which he had fled after escaping house arrest, Chen now says that American officials encouraged him to leave the safe haven of the embassy building, in part by making promises that they failed to keep. In an interview with CNN's Steven Jiang, he expressed deep disappointment with the U.S. and with President Barack Obama personally. He said that embassy officials were no longer picking up his calls and that he already felt his rights being "violated" by the Chinese government, which had promised him his freedom in exchange for him leaving the embassy. He strenuously and repeatedly asked the U.S. and Obama to help him and his family leave China.

The interview portrays Chen as furious at the U.S., which he had only 24 hours ago seen as his greatest hope, and portrays the Obama administration as having sold out the high-profile activist, who in 2005 made an enemy of the Chinese government when he campaigned against thousands of forced abortions and forced sterilizations.

MORE ON CHEN GUANGCHENG
The American Beacon in Beijing
Obama's Realpolitik
Preventing the Next Chen
Did the U.S. Fail Chen?
The interview, initially published on Jiang's verified blogspot account, has since been removed. Neither he nor CNN appear to have explained why. (Update: Jiang, on Twitter, says he removed the interview to re-post it later as part of a larger CNN.com story, which is now up.)

Chen's comments portray the U.S. as manipulating him, cutting him off from outside communication and encouraging him to leave the embassy rather than seek asylum. He said he was denied his requests to call friends. He said he felt the embassy officials had lied to him.

"The embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me in the hospital. But this afternoon as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone," he said. "I'm very disappointed at the U.S. government. ... I don't think [U.S. officials] protected human rights in this case."

When asked why he had left the embassy rather than staying and perhaps seeking asylum, Chen seemed to blame the embassy officials. "At the time I didn't have a lot of information. I wasn't allowed to call my friends from inside the embassy. I couldn't keep up with news so I didn't know a lot of things that were happening," he said.

Chen agreed when Jiang asked him, "If you stay in China, is there no future?" He also said that he had tried calling two U.S. embassy officials "numerous times" but that no one had answered. "I told the embassy I would like to talk to Rep. [Chris] Smith but they somehow never managed to arrange it. I feel a little puzzled."

He described the Chinese police's brutal treatment of his wife while he was in detention, which appears to have been a tool for coercing his departure from the embassy. "[My wife] was tied to a chair by police for two days. Then they carried sticks to our home, threatening to beat her to death," he said, adding that they told her she would be sent home to Shandong province and beaten there if Chen did not leave the embassy.

The activist pleaded with the U.S. to remove him and his family from China. "I want them to protect human rights through concrete actions. We are in danger. If you can talk to Hillary [Clinton], I hope she can help my whole family leave China," he said. "I would like to say to [President Obama]: Please do everything you can to get our whole family out."

A statement this morning from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton read, "I am pleased that we were able to facilitate Chen Guangcheng's stay and departure from the U.S. Embassy in a way that reflected his choices and our values. I was glad to have the chance to speak with him today and to congratulate him on being reunited with his wife and children."

If Chen's story is true, it suggests that U.S. officials manipulated him in an effort to defuse what could have become a tense stand-off between the U.S. and China. That would have been just the sort of mess that the U.S. doesn't need as it prepares for this week's U.S.-China summit on economic and geopolitical issues. The Obama administration needs China's support not just for its most pressing foreign policy issues -- Iran, North Korea, Syria, etc. -- but for domestic issues too. Obama is facing reelection in a few months, and his prospects then are dependent on U.S. economic growth, which is in turn at least partially dependent on Chinese economic policies.

That's not to say that Obama sold out a blind human rights activist to ensure his own reelection. We simply don't know why embassy officials did what they did, and they may have had very different -- and better-intentioned -- reasons than what Chen seems to believe. But it certainly appears that American officials were eager to rush Chen out the door, and it's hard to divorce that from the enormous incentives they had to avoid the U.S.-China confrontation that could have followed had Chen sought asylum for himself or for his family.

Update: Time's Jay Newton-Small reports that U.S. officials deny Chen's account, and give a very different version of events. According to several diplomatic officers, the U.S. offered to either grant Chen asylum (he would have to leave his wife and child in China) or to work out a special deal with the Chinese government on his behalf that would grant him partial freedom within China:
In unprecedented diplomatic negotiations with the Chinese starting Monday, Cohen and his colleagues laid out Chen's options. He could leave and seek asylum in the U.S. while his wife and daughter would likely remain under house arrest in Shandong, or he could choose to stay in China. If he chose the latter, U.S. negotiators would seek assurances from the Chinese government that Chen and his family would not return to the abusive circumstances under which they lived for the last seven years. Cohen advocated a middle path to Chen, based on a deal forged by Chinese activist Ai Weiwei, with whom Cohen has also worked. Chinese officials released Ai from detention last June after 81 days and allowed him to travel freely within Beijing; he recently gave a Skype speech to hundreds of supporters. "Though this solution has caused some problems for the government, they have tolerated it because they know it's better than the international condemnation of locking him up. Ai is showing a kind of path we are trying hard to create, a space between prison and total freedom," Cohen told reporters on a call sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. "That's a kind of precedent I've talked to Chen about."

Some U.S. officials, according to Newton-Small, are worried that Chen's interviews, like the one with CNN's reporter (which actually went online after Time's story) might "have complicated [the] delicate and unprecedented diplomatic deal, orchestrated by Chinese and American officials over the last three days." In other words, in expressing his desire to leave China, he is embarrassing the Chinese officials who are now his protectors; he's also alienating U.S. officials in the process.

[evolution8]

Poor Chen he was deceived by his own country! Will pray for him and his family...

[evolution8]

U.S., China forge tentative deal on Chinese activist
Matthew Lee and Gillian Wong - Associated Press - 5/4/2012 10:40:00 AM
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Defa ... id=1591608


BEIJING - The U.S. and China forged the outlines of a deal Friday to end a diplomatic standoff over legal activist Chen Guangcheng that would let him travel to the U.S. with his family for a university fellowship.

After days of behind-the-scenes talks, reversals and emotional calls by Chen from a guarded hospital room, the U.S. and China made a series of announcements signaling a logjam had been broken.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Chen may apply for travel permits to study abroad. An American University has offered Chen a fellowship with provisions for his family, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, adding that the U.S. expects Beijing to quickly process their travel permits, after which U.S. visas would be granted.

"Over the course of the day, progress has been made to help him have the future that he wants, and we will be staying in touch with him as this process moves forward," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said speaking to reporters after two days of annual strategic talks in Beijing.

The deal, if tentative, showed renewed resolve by Washington and Beijing to end one of their most delicate diplomatic crises in years.

Dealing with Chen's case quickly allows the governments to focus on managing the larger irritants over trade, Syria, Iran and North Korea that bedevil relations between the world's largest economies, one a superpower, the other its up-and-coming rival.

A blind, self-taught lawyer and symbol in China's civil rights movement, Chen triggered the standoff after he escaped abusive house arrest in his rural town and sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing last week.

He left six days later under a negotiated deal in which he and his family were to be reunited at a hospital and then safely relocated in China so he can formally study law. But he then upended the agreement by saying they wanted to go abroad.

Obstacles to getting Chen out of China remain. Key among then is whether he would have to return to his home county in Shandong province to apply for a passport. Though a usual procedure, it would potentially expose him to retribution from the local officials who kept him and his family under brutal house arrest for his activism that exposed forced abortions and other misdeeds.

After emerging from the embassy and arriving at Chaoyang Hospital on Wednesday for treatment of an injury, Chen said he had no further direct contact with U.S. officials for nearly two days, fueling a sense of abandonment and fears about the safety of him, his wife and two children.

"I can only tell you one thing. My situation right now is very dangerous," Chen said told The Associated Press earlier Friday.

However, Clinton said that Ambassador Gary Locke spoke with Chen on Friday and that embassy staff and a doctor met him. "He confirms that he and his family now want to go to the United States so that he can pursue his studies," Clinton said.

Medical checkups showed his health is good other than three broken bones in his foot suffered when he was escaping form his rural village, a senior State Department official said.

Hospital staff brought his children new clothes, cut their hair and gave his son a present for his birthday, the official said. The son is believed to be around 10, the official and family friends said, a vagueness that is typical in rural China where tradition means birthdays are celebrated at the Lunar New Year.

Chen could not immediately be reached for his response to the latest developments.

His earlier pleas for U.S. sanctuary, delivered via conversations with The Associated Press, other foreign media and friends, have resonated around the world and even become part of Washington politics in a presidential election year.

On Thursday, he called in to a congressional hearing in Washington, telling lawmakers he wanted to meet U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, who is in Beijing for annual security talks. "I hope I can get more help from her," Chen said.

The Foreign Ministry statement that said Chen was a normal citizen who may apply to study overseas.

"Chen Guangcheng is currently being treated in hospital. As a Chinese citizen, if he wants to study abroad he can go through the normal channels to the relevant departments and complete the formalities in accordance with the law like other Chinese citizens," the statement said without elaborating.

While the statement only reiterates the normal rights of a Chinese citizen, it underscored the government's openness to letting him go and gives shape to a possible solution: He goes abroad with the approval of the Chinese government, not the U.S., giving Beijing a face-saving way out.

Chen has a letter of invitation from New York University, according to Guo Yushan, a supporter who helped hide Chen in Beijing after his escape from house arrest, in a Twitter post early Friday.

At a Foreign Ministry briefing, spokesman Liu Weimin also confirmed that Chen faces no pending criminal charges, indirectly acknowledging that the house arrest he and his family endured the past 20 months in their rural home was illegal.

"According to Chinese laws, he is a regular citizen. He can absolutely go through regular formalities by normal means," Liu said.

[evolution8]

BREAKING: Chen may be allowed to fly to America: U.S. officials
Fri May 04, 2012 12:55 EST
Update: 05/04/12 at 3:46 pm
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaki ... eport-says

by Kathleen Gilbert

BEIJING, May 4, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A deal may soon be brokered to allow Chen Guangcheng and his family to leave China to take up a fellowship at an America university, according to U.S. State Department officials.

The agreement was disclosed Friday morning, after the fellowship was offered and Beijing said they would accept Chen’s application to study at a university abroad.

Chen’s wife, who reports having been tied to a chair, beaten, and threatened with death by Chinese officials following her husband’s escape, and Chen’s children would also be allowed to leave the Communist country with him.

Beijing had previously indicated that the blind human rights activist would be free to attend a university and act as a free citizen, but those affirmations seemed less than firm: officials were meanwhile keeping Chen under police lockdown at a local hospital, at one point disallowing visits from U.S. officials.

Human rights advocates and U.S. politicians, including U.S. congressmen and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, had been placing increasing pressure on the Obama administration to ensure Chen’s safety after the whistleblower left the embassy where he had taken refuge after 19 months of brutal, extra-judicial house imprisonment at the hands of the Chinese government.

Chen has said that he was influenced to leave the U.S. embassy by news, conveyed at China’s request by an American official, that if he did not leave his wife would be sent back to their village where Chinese officials had already overrun their home, and where she would likely suffer severe maltreatment.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that embassy staff met Friday morning with Chen, who expressed his wish to flee to America “so he could pursue his studies,” and also affirmed that China, which she called a “great nation,” had expressed opennness to letting Chen study abroad.

“This is not just about well-known activists. It’s about the human rights and aspirations of more than a billion people here in China and billions more about the world, and the future of this great nation and all nations,” said Clinton.

Yet signs that the Chinese government is angered by the turnout have also emerged: Beijing Daily, a top government-controlled newspaper, called Chen “a tool and a pawn for American politicians to blacken China.”