the Magsaysay award – sometimes referred to as Asia’s Nobel prize – on behalf of her blind husband, friends and other sources confirmed.
Yuan Weijing, a former English teacher, was prevented from leaving the country and authorities revoked her passport and confiscated her mobile phone, friends and Christian rights watchers said.
Chen was named as one of seven winners of the Magsaysay award for his "irrepressible passion for justice in leading ordinary Chinese citizens to assert their legitimate rights under the law."
His wife was said to have been aware that she would probably not be allowed to leave. The previous night she apparently received a call from Shandong officials telling her that her passport was invalid under a statute that blocked overseas travel for those deemed likely to harm the nation’s interests.
ESCORTED HOME
Yuan was apparently forcibly escorted back to her home town, August 24, where the men "pulled her hair and twisted her arms, dragging her out of the car." They "confiscated her belongings, while refusing to show any official legal documents regarding who they were and why they had taken her belongings," said Christian rights group Jubilee Campaign USA.
Foreign journalists covering her departure were briefly detained, BosNewsLife monitored. "I was taken to the basement of the Beijing airport after I was stopped by the airport official at the security check. I saw 16-17 strong men in the basement, some of whom were from my town. We stayed in the basement for several minutes, and then left for Linyi," she later said in published remarks.
Yuan has meanwhile arrived in the couple’s home in Lingyi city, Jubilee Campaign USA confirmed. However relatives now fear she "will be sent back to a village in Shandong province, less than two months after she escaped from house arrest and round-the-clock surveillance by local police," said Jubilee Campaign USA, which has been involved in supporting her.
Last August, her husband was sentenced to four years in prison, ostensibly for disrupting traffic and damaging property, but rights groups said he was prosecuted because he tried to expose a program of forced late-term abortions in Lingyi city in China’s Shandong province.
MORE INCIDENTS
It is not the first time that China has prevented its nationals from collecting Magsaysay awards, observers said.
In the past five years, the authorities reportedly blocked the army doctor Jiang Yanyong, who revealed the true scale of the 2003 Sars outbreak, and Gao Yaojie, the doctor who helped to expose an HIV-blood contamination scandal in Henan province.
Jubilee Campaign USA has expressed concerns about the prison treatment Chen receives after he was “severely beaten." Human rights group Amnesty International (AI) said earlier there were reasons to "fear for his life" amid expected "further torture and ill-treatment."
Chen, 35, told his wife recently he was being punished for "being disobedient" due to his insistence on filing an appeal to the provincial higher court. After he also refused to have his head shaved, "six other prisoners had pushed him to the floor, encouraged by prison guards, and hit and kicked him hard," AI quoted his wife as saying. Medical treatment was also withheld from him, the group said.
INTERNATIONAL CONCERN
Western diplomats have expressed concerns about what they see as a crackdown on media and human rights activists at a time when the country prepares for the Olympic Games, next year in Beijing.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel while visiting China this week stressed the need for the Communist nation to improve human rights.
Merkel told a group of Chinese researchers Tuesday, August 27, that human rights "are of very high importance" to Germany. She previously made similar warnings to Russia, while visiting Hungary, last week, BosNewsLife established. (With reporting from China and BosNewsLife Research).
