Chen Guangcheng: Let Me Leave China on Hillary Clinton’s Plane

The Daily Beast’s Melinda Liu writes: "I’ve known Chen Guangcheng for more than a decade—he’s been through intimidation, beatings, jail, and extralegal house arrest—but through it all I never sensed he was scared. Now he’s scared. . . . At the hospital, Chen’s fears mounted as his wife told him she’d been tied to a chair, beaten, and interrogated by Chinese guards after they learned he had entered the U.S. embassy in Beijing last Friday. . . . As dinnertime came and went, he and his wife and two young children, who had traveled to Beijing, had nothing to eat. Their 6-year-old daughter began crying from the hunger pangs. Chen and his wife hadn’t seen their son for two years before their reunion at the hospital. 

". . . Human-rights activists are now extremely worried about Chen’s fate, and some are astonished at this startling—and dark—turn of events. . . . Bob Fu, president of the U.S.-based ChinaAid Association, spoke by phone with Chen and said, 'He was very heavy-hearted. He was crying when we spoke. He said he was under enormous pressure to leave the embassy. Some people almost made him feel he was being a huge burden to the U.S.' Chen decided to leave, Fu confirmed, because he was told 'he would have no chance of reunification with his wife and children if he didn’t.' . . . [I]n order to go abroad, Chen and his family need passports—and in order to apply for them, the family would have to go back to Shandong, where the provincial thugs are waiting. 'If the U.S. can intervene, and if the Chinese central government can make a phone call, those passports can be ready in a day. It might require a diplomatic push,' said Fu hopefully.