Chen Guangcheng who was jailed after exposing forced late-term abortions and forced sterilizations that are apparently part of China’s strict one-child policy.
Chen, who self-taught law and became known as a "barefoot lawyer" for providing legal advice to peasants, was convicted in August of «damaging property and disrupting traffic" during a protest in his home village in Shandong province on China’s east coast in February.
On December 1 a Shandong court upheld the verdict after an appeals court ordered a retrial last month. Chen maintains the charges were trumped up after he exposed family planning abuses.
"China is the only country in the world where it is illegal to have a brother or sister. For more then 27 years, China has brutally enforced its compulsory one child policy," said Ann Buwalda, the director of Jubilee Campaign USA, in a statement to BosNewsLife.
"VIOLENT BIRTH CONTROL"
"Chen’s reputation led him to the Shandong province where he met hundreds of women who had been forced to have late term abortions or were forcibly sterilized. Enraged at the authorities “violent birth control practice and brutal abuses of women,” Chen compiled evidence against them, recorded witness testimonies, and filed a class-action suit on behalf of these innocent victims," Buwalda said.
Chen managed to file the law suit despite becoming blind as a child after a prolonged illness. "China does not look favorably upon children with birth defects or those who become crippled later in life, thus Chen struggled to get an education. After being denied admission at every state institution on account of his disabilities, he decided to teach himself law and became a crusader for peasants’ rights," explained Buwalda, who has closely monitored the case.
Buwalda and other rights activists have expressed concern over Chen’s health in prison, after he said he was threatened with torture. In an interview with his lawyer broadcast on US-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA) this month, he said that "In late July, a certain individual – either from public security or the judicial branch – came to the detention center and ordered that I be tortured."
CONTINUING RIGHTS CAMPAIGN
However Chen stressed that, "His order was flatly rejected by detention center officials," and added he had met other officials who were privately sympathetic to his case. Yet, he said he would continue to engage in the rights campaign. "Don’t worry about me. Think of it as if I have embarked on a long journey. My resolve has not been shaken. I will never give up."
Buwalda asked Christians around the world to write letters of protests to Chinese ambassadors in their countries and urge China to safe his life and release him. Chen is not the only activist officially sentenced in recent weeks. On December 1, a court in Beijing also overturned an appeal filed by Zhao Yan, a Chinese researcher for the New York Times, and upheld a three-year prison sentence handed down in August for alleged fraud.
The decision came shortly after the Beijing Higher People’s Court upheld a five-year jail term against Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong-based China correspondent for Singapore’s Straits Times, on charges that he spied for Taiwan — another case that has been criticized abroad and in Hong Kong, news reports said.(With reports from China and BosNewsLife Research).
