This is the story of how a blind lawyer in China took on the authorities.
Advocate for China's Weak Runs Afoul of the Powerful
By [4]JOSEPH KAHN
BEIJING, July 19 -- Only a few years ago, Chen Guangcheng, a blind man
who taught himself the law, was hailed as a champion of peasant rights
who symbolized [5]China's growing embrace of legal norms.
Mr. Chen helped other people with disabilities avoid illegal fees and
taxes. He forced a paper mill to stop spewing toxic chemicals into his
village's river. The authorities in his home province, Shandong,
considered him a propaganda coup and broadcast clips from his wedding
ceremony on television.
All that changed last year, when he organized a rare class-action
lawsuit against the local government for forcing peasants to have
late-term [6]abortions and be sterilized. Mr. Chen, 35, is now a
symbol of something else: the tendency of Communist Party officials to
use legal pretexts to crush dissent.
A court in Yinan County of Shandong Province is scheduled to hear
charges as early as Thursday that Mr. Chen destroyed public property
and gathered a crowd to block traffic. His lawyers argue that he would
have had trouble committing those crimes even if he could see. At the
time they were said to have occurred, he was being guarded day and
night by a team of local officials.
His case is typical of efforts to punish lawyers, journalists and
participants in environmental, health and religious groups who expose
abuses or organize people in a manner officials consider threatening.
Like Mr. Chen, they are often accused of fraud, illicit business
practices or leaking state secrets, charges that do not reflect the
political nature of their offenses.
"Local officials made Chen's house into a jail and turned him into a
prisoner long before he faced any charges," said Li Jinsong, one of
his lawyers. "Then they concocted charges so they could send him to an
actual jail."
The purview of Chinese law was broad enough to allow a self-taught
peasant like Mr. Chen, dubbed a "barefoot lawyer," to emerge from
obscurity and help set some legal precedents in his home province.
Since he got into trouble, Mr. Chen has relied on a network of
scholars and lawyers in Beijing to defend him.
But the law does not protect those who offend the powerful. Local
Communist Party officials control prosecutors and judges in their
domains, and they can use the legal system to carry out political
persecutions.
"China has advanced to the point that officials have to pay attention
to the law," said Teng Biao, a legal expert at the China University of
Political Science and Law and a supporter of Mr. Chen. "But in some
cases, they put a superficial legal cover on an essentially illegal
action."
Officials in Shandong declined to answer questions about Mr. Chen,
saying they could not discuss a pending court case.
Nature dealt Mr. Chen his biggest challenge. He lost his sight after a
childhood illness and did not attend school until he was 18. When he
did go to school, he quickly encountered legal problems.
China's government exempts the blind from taxes and fees. But Mr. Chen
often did not receive such benefits, according to relatives who asked
to remain anonymous because the authorities have threatened to punish
them for speaking to reporters. Determined to realize his legal
rights, he studied law on his own, recruiting his four older brothers
to read legal texts to him.
In 1994 he went to Beijing to protest violations of laws protecting
the handicapped. While there, he took action against the Beijing
subway authority because attendants would not let him ride free. He
got favorable media attention and free subway tokens after that.
Rakishly handsome in his dark glasses, he became a popular legal
crusader. He handled cases against the local sanitation bureau, the
police and the bureau of commerce. A paper factory that spewed noxious
waste into a river near his home was forced to suspend operations,
making him a local hero.
So when residents of his home village of Dongshigu were ensnared in a
coercive birth control campaign last spring that appeared to violate
national laws, they turned to Mr. Chen.
Officials in the city of Linyi, which has a population of more than 10
million and contains Dongshigu, forced thousands of residents to
undergo abortions or sterilization, according to people supporting Mr.
Chen who cited local documents to support their claims.
Such tactics, common in the early days of China's strict population
control policies 25 years ago, are now illegal. The law says the
authorities can levy fines only against people who exceed birth
quotas. But forceful measures remain pervasive, because failure to
reach population control targets can end an official's prospects for
promotion.
Mr. Chen publicized the allegations as he prepared a class-action
lawsuit. The problem received widespread attention in the
international news media and was at least initially taken seriously in
Beijing.
The National Family Planning and Population Commission investigated.
It reported last September on its Web site that it had uncovered
abuses in Linyi and that it had taken steps to punish officials there.
But that did not protect Mr. Chen, his family or his neighbors in
Dongshigu from retaliation.
When Mr. Chen visited Beijing in September to seek legal help, Linyi
officials tracked him down, bundled him into a car and drove him 400
miles back home, Mr. Chen's lawyers said.
From then until his formal arrest in June, Mr. Chen was confined to
his house or to a government-run hotel. His telephone line was cut.
There is no provision in Chinese law for informal incarceration of
this kind, his lawyers say.
Mr. Chen's relatives and neighbors in Dongshigu say the authorities
stationed up to 70 uniformed and plainclothes police officers or hired
thugs in the village. The police prevented Mr. Chen and his supporters
from communicating with the outside world. In a dozen different
encounters, they beat lawyers and journalists who tried to enter the
village, lawyers involved in such encounters said.
Supporters of Mr. Chen said that the local authorities had long
intended to take legal action against him but that they had been
stymied by the fact that he had not committed any crime. By June they
at last announced the grounds for his arrest: destroying property and
blocking traffic.
The first charge refers to a confrontation in February between
Dongshigu residents and the uniformed and plainclothes police officers
guarding Mr. Chen in his home. Villagers pushed a police van and two
government cars into a gully. They said they were enraged that the
officers, described as idling away the hours outside Mr. Chen's home,
declined to make one of their cars available to take an ailing woman
to the hospital during the Lunar New Year holiday.
The indictment against Mr. Chen says he told people to damage the
cars. Villagers say that he had no role in the clash and that he was
not permitted to meet or talk to villagers at the time.
The second charge stems from an incident in March. Mr. Chen was
described as distraught that a friend had been beaten by local
officials. He demanded to talk to someone in charge. In a change of
tactics, his guards let him visit the village party headquarters and
then hail a car on the main road to take him to the county center.
Guards followed him to the road and helped him flag down cars,
witnesses to the event said. They then took photographs of Mr. Chen in
the roadway with cars stopped around him -- which were used as
evidence that he had blocked traffic, his lawyer said.
Such charges might appear easy enough to contest in court. But Mr.
Chen's lawyers face formidable obstacles.
Mr. Li and other lawyers helping Mr. Chen said they had received death
threats when visiting Linyi, one of which Mr. Li recorded on his
cellphone. He said the police had declined to investigate. Villagers
say they have been warned not to appear as witnesses for Mr. Chen.
When Mr. Li tried to enter the village early this month to take
depositions, he said, he was surrounded by thugs. They told him to
leave the area. When he refused, they pushed his car into a ditch and
rolled it onto its roof. Mr. Li and a fellow lawyer were lightly
injured. Much of the confrontation was captured surreptitiously on
videotape by a supporter of Mr. Chen.
"We can hardly have high expectations of a fair trial," says Mr. Teng,
the legal scholar, "when criminals are in charge of the law."
New York Times, July-20-2006.
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