Chen

I first wrote about Chen Guangcheng last December here.

I'm sure most people now know his name and his plight but in case you don't:
  Chen is a blind lawyer and human rights activist from Shandong Province, China. He successfully defended disabled people in his village and surrounding areas who were illegally being taxed, and he also won a case against a paper mill that was allowing toxic chemicals to flow into rivers, destroying crops and wildlife. Later in his life, he began fighting against corrupt local officials who enforced China's supposed "informed choice" (more like, "you-are-informed-of-our-choice") one-child policy, with forced sterilizations & abortions.

 From Breitbart article:

Chen is an anti-abortion activist, and that runs against Obama’s philosophy--and particularly to the current “War on Women” narrative of which “reproductive rights” is the centerpiece.
Chen is a women’s rights activist, but in China that has a different meaning than it does here. In 1979 China introduced its draconian one-child policy. 

This policy requires only one child per couple, but because of the cultural value placed on male children, it has resulted in a staggering number of abortions--13 million in 2010. (That figure only counts registered medical institutions, something to which most of rural China does not have access. It is estimated the real number could be two to three times that amount.)

This has become his true cause as it is so common in his area and clearly against national law, however Chinese officials do not care, and are probably supporting this violent enforcement of the one-child policy. Chen has been detained many times and charged with outrageous and bogus crimes to justify locking him up and beating him, his family, and his friends/supporters. (Christian Bale was even hit and pushed while trying to visit him last year).


        He has been heavily guarded and cut off from the world, but last month even as a blind man, was able to escape the confines of his "home" (prison) and slip passed guards to wade through water and stumble through rural territory with the cover of night protecting him. He reached a point where a friend was planned to be to assist smuggling him to a safer location...which they thought would be the U.S. Embassy. While his family (and now friends) were still in the hands of the guards who beat and imprisoned him, he had little time to make something happen. Fortunately, or so he thought, Secretary Hillary Clinton was visiting China at the time. He asked to speak directly with her, but only did so over the phone (some accounts claim he said "i would like to see you" in chinese..leading many to believe he was still under pressure while at the embassy). After a few days of 'negotiations' between the U.S. embassy and Chinese government, a supposed compromise was reached wherein Chen was told he and his family would be relocated to a safe part of China and be allowed to study and continue his legal works. He was also told the "extra-legal" activities in Shandong would be investigated...sounds really promising especially when the Chinese government blocked searches for his name on the internet of China, to prevent the spread of concern and support...and embarrassment of their failure to detain a blind man.

       Chen supposedly agreed to the terms and left the U.S. Embassy with guards to protect him. He was reunited with his family and taken to a hospital. Acting as if she truly trusted the Chinese in her heart, Hillary said she was "pleased that we were able to facilitate Chen Guangcheng's stay and departure from the U.S. Embassy in a way the reflected his choices and our values." If you look at that statement, it really is the truth...."his choices" to me, translate to his decision to keep fighting against abortions, and "our values" translate to her administration's pro-abortion/pro-keep-borrowing-$$-from-China values.

     When I see Hillary Clinton's underwhelmed reaction to things like seeing a video of Gaddafi being captured, beaten and murdered, I just personally cannot see how a woman can be so insensitive to the horror, albeit a beating/execution of a murderous dictator. Reading about her political positions, campaign work and votes over the passed 40 years, I see that she has always been pretty cold-hearted, especially regarding abortion --voting against notifying parents when minor has out-of-state abortion, voted no on criminal penalty for "harming unborn fetus during other crime" (i.e. Peterson etc), voted against ban on partial-birth abortion, and even sent a letter to Obama in 2008 while campaigning against him, chastising him for not being pro-choice enough!! I suppose you want a somewhat callous, tough person to be your secretary of state, but when a blind and beaten civil rights activist with family and friends being attacked and imprisoned and dissident of a communist country asks for political asylum, we should help him.

  We accept the most refugees of all countries who honor the idea of political asylum:

"...of the top ten countries accepting resettled refugees in 2006, the United States accepted more than twice as many as the next nine countries combined."(wikipedia)

 But it was too inconvenient to help a pro-life prisoner of conscience from a country we are financially indebted to.
  As much as I don't like The Daily Show, Jon Stewart got this one right. 

    Chen himself has come out and said he was lied to by the embassy, and the negotiation was under threat of his family's safety. He now fears for his and his family's lives, asking to be allowed to leave China and come to the U.S.:

“No. I came because of an agreement. I was worried about the safety of my family,” said Chen regarding his departure, according to Channel 4. “A gang of them have taken over our house, sitting in our room and eating at our table, waving thick sticks around.

“They’ve turned our home into a prison, with seven cameras and electric fence all around.”

Chen expressed his dismay that no one from the U.S. embassy had accompanied him. “Nobody from the (US) Embassy is here. I don’t understand why. They promised to be here,” he said. (source)

  Chen, who says he felt pressured to leave the embassy, adds that he finally decided to do so when American officials informed him that if didn’t, his wife would be beaten by vengeful Chinese officials. Embassy personnel deny the claim, although they admit that they let Chen know that his wife would be taken back to the residence where the couple had been beaten many times.“The embassy told me that they would have someone accompany me the whole time,” Chen told reporters. “But today when I got to the ward, I found that there was not a single embassy official here, and so I was very unsatisfied. I felt they did not tell me the truth on this issue.” (source)

 In response, Clinton let him know that he can apply to study abroad. That's like telling someone who is drowning, "Hey, you can always stop breathing." She can't truly believe that Chen's troubles are over and that China will simply allow him and his family to leave. I hope the Obama administration feels enough political pressure to help Chen and his family before it's too late. As for this "War on Women," what about the Chinese women who are forcibly sterilized, or forced to abort that Chen was helping? Sucks to be pro-life---no one helps you out. If you look at Obama's own crazy choices, he may be quite fond of this "one-child policy"...after all, Obama's "science czar" authored a book "describing" how to commit the same atrocities, and be covered by the Constitution, if necessary....I say "describing," because after being chosen by B.O., he had to clarify things to shut people up about his invalid overpopulation concerns, so he sorta sidestepped and tried to force the book into sci-fi/"encyclopedic textbook" category...I guess we should shove these two quotes in the same genre then?

  In a 1969 article, Holdren and co-author Paul R. Ehrlich argued, "if the population control measures are not initiated immediately, and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come."^[21] In 1973, Holdren encouraged a decline in fertility to well below replacement in the United States, because "210 million now is too many and 280 million in 2040 is likely to be much too many." 

 Forget about a "war on women"...this is a war on babies.