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L AST month, there were reports thatChen Guangcheng was dead.That they had at last killed him.“They”? China’s ruling Com mu-

nists, who have tormented Chen for years.Other reports said, No, he is not dead: justin very bad shape. Any report about Chenis now impossible to confirm or deny. Theauthorities are not letting anyone from theoutside see or talk to him.

Many people in the world regard Chenas one of the greatest men we have knownin the last decade. These admirers work onthe assumption that Chen is alive. A furiousinternational campaign is under way tosave him.

Chen was born on Nov. 12, 1971, in theLinyi area of Shandong Province. When ayear old, he contracted a fever, which lefthim blind. Just a peasant, he educated him-self, including in the law. He was ready andavailable to help people. Jianli Yang, a dis-sident now in America, calls him a “bornleader,” someone who has always cared for others and whom others respond to.

To the extent he could, Chen helped thedisabled petition for their rights. He helpedfarmers, too. In the worldwide press, hehas been known as “the blind lawyer,” or “the barefoot lawyer,” or “the blind ruralactivist.” Many Chinese throughout thecountry know him simply as “the blindman.”

What gained him his fame, and torment,was his exposure of one fact: In the year 2005 alone, in just the Linyi area, therewere 130,000 forced abortions and ste -rilizations. These procedures are brutal.Moreover, relatives of those who escapedthe procedures were detained and tortured.Harry Wu, a long-famous dissident work-ing in America, says that few outside Chinareally understand the consequences of theone-child policy. Jing Zhang, another dissi-dent, associated with the Boston-basedgroup All Girls Allowed, points out thatChen touched one of China’s most sensi-tive nerves.

He organized a class-action suit against

part ment and the EU uttered their peeps.Organizations were good enough to giveChen awards, in absentia. Nothing movedthe Chinese government.

He was released from prison in Sep -tember 2010 and confined to his home inthe village of Dongshigu. This sort of con-finement is known as ruanjin , or softdetention, but it has been very hard. Chenand his family have been watched con-stantly and subjected to escalating abuses.In February, he managed to have a videosmuggled out to the West. It was publicized

by a group in Texas called the China AidAssociation, which said that the video hadcome courtesy of a “sympathetic govern-ment source.”

In the video, Chen described the circum-stances in which he and his family were

being kept, and he said, “The thing weneed to do now is conquer terror” and

expose practices that are “lacking in hu -man conscience.” He said he was “fully prepared” to be tortured after the video’s

release, but was “not afraid.” Yuan Weijingspoke too, saying that her family was indanger. With a breaking voice, she ex -

pressed the hope that friends would takecare of their children, Kerui and Kesi, if something happened to them, the parents.

What happened immediately is thatChen and Yuan were beaten to a pulp. A let-ter from Yuan, made available in June, toldus the following:

More than ten men covered me totallywith a blanket and kicked my ribs and allover my body. After half an hour’s non-stop torture, I finally squeezed my headout of the blanket. I saw more than tenmen surrounding Chen Guangcheng, tor-turing him. Some of them twisted his armsforcefully while the others pushed his

head down and lifted his collar up tightly.2 6

local Party officials. At first, the govern-ment in Beijing seemed pleased with him.In China, believe it or not, forced abortionand forced sterilization are illegal, official-ly. Beijing signaled that it would punishthe guilty locals. But Chen was gettingattention in the international press, cele-

brated as a whistleblower, and a blind peasant, at that. This displeased Beijing,which left Chen to the mercies of the localofficials.

They seized him in March 2006. Theyharassed, detained, and beat members of his family and his lawyers. To him, theydid worse. Eventually, they gave him atrial, but it was the usual sham. For exam-

ple, his lawyers were forbidden to attend.Chen’s wife, Yuan Weijing, said, “Thereisn’t much hope. . . . We live in a nationwithout law, a nation without morality.”He was sentenced to four years and three

months in prison.There, he faced what political prisonerscan be expected to face. He was beaten

over and over. He went on hunger strikes.He was denied medicine.

His wife, sometimes under house ar -rest, sometimes not, did all she could tohelp him. The months before the BeijingOlympics in 2008 were especially bad for dissidents and other “troublemakers,”although Western supporters of thoseOlympics had said the Games would dowonders for China’s liberalization. Theguard around Yuan increased from tenmen to 40. She wrote a letter to Chinese

president Hu Jintao, calling herself “noth-ing but a rights defender’s wife.” She toldof the humiliations she and her familyendured.

The West protested too, in various ways.At the U.N., there were “working groups”

and “special rapporteurs.” The State De -

B Y J AY N O R D L I N G E R

A Hero of Us All

Chen Guangcheng, China’s blind and brutalized lawyer

With their son Kerui

S

T R / A F P / G E T T Y / N E W S C O M

8/3/2019 "A Hero of Us All" by Jay Norlinger, National Review

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‘D ON’T you know I’m God?”taunted Muhammad Ali, inthe first of the epic trilogyof heavyweight prizefights

with Joe Frazier that defined the early1970s. Ali even took to accompanyingeach word— Don’t—you—know—I’m— God? —with a swing of his fists, unleash-

ing another flurry of his lightning-fast punches. Frazier, undaunted, singularlyunaffected by Ali’s sophomoric doggereland sophisticated psy-ops, kept boring inon his opponent, a steady, bobbing, weav-ing machine, and spat back through his

bloodied mouthpiece: “Well, God, yougonna get whupped tonight!”

And very near the end of that firstencounter between them, on March 8,1971—the Madison Square Gardenspectacular between two undefeatedheavyweight champions, billed, withouthy per bole, as the Fight of the Century— Frazier made good on his promise.

It was 26 seconds into the 15th round.With his signature roundhouse lefthook—the 30th he’d landed, the finalexplosion in a breathtaking night of fireworks—Frazier connected with Ali’sright jaw, snapping his head back anddropping The Greatest to the canvas.

Bedlam at the Garden! Ali was up quick-ly, but with that one punch, “Smokin’ Joe”entered the ranks of the immortal, one of only three professional fighters ever to

put Ali down. The pride of Philadelphiahad answered definitively, at least for one night, the questions that haunted

boxing, and America at large, at the closeof the fiery Sixties.

Who would triumph: the beautifuldancer and satirical poet, or the grunting,uneducated working man? Was history

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. . . Guangcheng was not able to resist and passed out after more than two hours.

The letter details a great deal more.Infuriated by the video, the authorities

did their best to ensure that nothing couldget in or out of the Chen home. They re -moved the family’s electronics and sealedthe windows with metal sheets. They in -stalled surveillance cameras. They plun-dered the house of almost everything,down to family photos, toys, and Chen’swhite cane. The goal was to isolate thefamily completely.

Over the months, a stream of visitorshave trekked to Dongshigu, hoping to seeChen. These include writers, lawyers,advocates for the disabled, and ordinarycitizens. They also include foreign dip -lomats and journalists. All have been re -

pulsed by teams of thugs at the four

entrances to the village. These thugs—amixture of policemen and their hirees— have detained, beaten, robbed, and shot atthe would-be visitors. Many of these inci-dents are meticulously documented.

Impossible to document, of course, isChen’s condition at the moment. But weknow for sure that beatings, malnutrition,and illness have taken their toll. The ques-tion is, To what degree? Chen’s supportersin China and around the world are redou-

bling their efforts in his behalf. Some peo- ple are risking a journey to Dongshigu on November 12, Chen’s 40th birthday. Thereis also a “sunglasses campaign.” Chen, likemany blind people, wears sunglasses, andsupporters are donning their own sunglass-es and having their picture taken, to be

posted on the Internet. It is a gesture of sol-idarity, a way of getting Beijing’s attention.

There is also pressure on an Americanmovie company. Relativity Media has juststarted filming 21 and Over in, of all

places, Linyi. They must be within shout-ing distance of Dongshigu. The companyis working in cooperation with the sameParty officials who are brutalizing Chen.The movie, according to publicity, is a“hilarious comedy” about “two childhoodfriends who drag their straight-arrow

buddy out to celebrate his twenty-first birthday the night before an all-importantmedical school interview.” And “when one

beer leads to another, the evening spiralsinto a wild epic misadventure of debauch-ery and mayhem that none of them willever forget.”

The same press release quotes Zhang

Shajun, a key Party official. He welcomes

his “good friend Ryan Kavanaugh andhis great company Relativity” and promis-es to “provide the best service possible inorder to help make the movie success -ful worldwide.” Naturally, human-rightsgroups have asked Relativity Media to usewhatever leverage it has to help ChenGuangcheng, or at least inquire into him.The company has so far seemed disin-clined.

On another front, Jianli Yang has writtenthe State Department, asking it to bar fromentering the United States a Party officialnamed Li Qun. Li studied at the Universityof New Haven in Connecticut, and evenserved as an assistant to New Haven’smayor. Now, according to Yang, he is theParty official chiefly responsible for Chen’s ordeal.

Have international protests done anygood at all? Reggie Littlejohn, president of

Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, saysyes: “I believe Chen would be dead by now but for people in the West speaking out for him.”

Across China, Chen is a symbol of hu -man rights, like Gao Zhisheng, another lawyer, who has been “disappeared,” andLiu Xiaobo, the political prisoner who isalso the 2010 Nobel peace laureate. ButSharon Hom of Human Rights in Chinamakes a point that is depressing and inspir-ing at the same time: There are many, manylike Chen, Gao, and Liu, but whose namesare unknown to us. They languish in pris-ons, “black jails,” psychiatric wards, andother dark places. They have stuck their necks out for their rights and all people’s.

Why do they do it? Why do they risk, or guarantee, the full wrath and murderous

power of a dictatorship? Of Chen Guang -cheng, Harry Wu says, “He had to tell thetruth. Simple. He had no choice but to tellthe truth. That is why people appreciatehim, and why the government hates him.”Perhaps Chen’s blindness gave him anextra dose of compassion and courage.Perhaps not. In any case, there is someonemuch like him in Cuba, the blind lawyer and activist Juan Carlos González Leiva.The bravery of such people is hard toaccount for. But it can be admired.

In that video, released earlier this year,Chen said, “A society that is not built ona foundation of fairness and equality, butinstead relies on bullying and violence,cannot possibly maintain lasting stabili-ty.” He is probably right about that. Yetthink how many suffer and die in the

meantime.2 8

B Y J A M E S R O S E N

The Great,Tragic

Joe Frazier A boxing legend, dead at 67

Mr. Rosen is the chief Washington correspondFox News. He is the author of The Strong Man:

John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate

(2008) and is at work on a book about the Be