The Chen Guangcheng Thread

[justdoit_]

On 22 April 2012, Chen escaped from house arrest where he was being held despite there being no pending charges against him. Fellow dissident Ai Weiwei said a friend told him that Chen waited until night, climbed over his compound walls, and slipped past "multiple cordons of guards". "You know he's blind, so the night to him is nothing," Ai's friend stated.

Chen's friend and fellow activist Hu Jia stated that Chen had been planning escape "for a long time", and had previously attempted to dig a tunnel for escape, but failed. In the weeks leading up to his escape, Chen tried to create the impression among his guards that he was ill in bed and had stopped appearing outside the house by day, allowing him multiple days to climb over the walls around his compound before his absence was discovered. Communicating with a network of activists via a cell phone that had been smuggled to him, Chen went over the wall around his house and past the layers of security around his village. Though he was familiar with his immediate surroundings from his childhood explorations, he later passed into less familiar territory, telling his supporters that he fell more than 200 times during his escape. Twenty hours after leaving his home, he reached a pre-determined pickup point where He Peirong, an English teacher and activist, was waiting. A chain of human rights activists then smuggled him into Beijing, where he reportedly reached the U.S. Embassy. Several of the activists reported to be involved were detained or disappeared in the days following the announcement of Chen's escape.

I like this guy.

A fascinating story still in flux as we speak.