Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng leaves US Embassy in Beijing
Last edited Wed May 2, 2012, 10:00 AM - Edit history (1)
Source: MSNBC
Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng has left the U.S. embassy in Beijing "of his own volition" after being there for six days, state news agency Xinhua said on Wednesday. Chen's escape from house arrest and fleeing into the embassy came days before China and the United States were due to hold high-level talks in Beijing. A senior U.S. official confirmed that Chen was out of the embassy.
"Chen Guangcheng has arrived at a medical facility in Beijing where he will receive medical treatment and be reunited with his family," said the official who requested anonymity.
The issue of Chen Guangcheng's future threatens to overshadow this year's round of high-level strategic and economic talks between the world's two biggest economic powers, due to begin with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on Thursday.
Publicly, the U.S. and Chinese governments have said nothing about the Chen case. Neither side wants the biggest human-rights issue between the two since Tiananmen Square to damage a working relationship between the world's top importer and exporter, and between the world's biggest military and the fastest developing.
Read more: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/02/11497242-blind-chinese-activist-chen-guangcheng-leaves-us-embassy-in-beijing?lite
Well, there you go.
More from WaPo:
[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0.3077em 0.3077em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]Chen Guangcheng breaks silence with phone call to The Washington Post[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3077em 0.3077em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]“Washington Post?” Chen repeated, his voice sounding generally happy. Chen said he was fine and was in the car headed to the hospital, Chaoyang Hospital. He repeated the name slowly, three times. And that was it. Chen handed the phone back to the ambassador, who said they were stuck in traffic, but promised a full briefing later.
--snip
I learned later that I was just one in a succession of calls U.S. diplomats made from the van at Chen’s request — they also spoke to Chen’s lawyer and to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, recently arrived in Beijing for an important two-day summit.
An embassy official called later to explain that it was Chen, not Locke, who specifically wanted to contact The Washington Post. Chen was aware of the international media coverage of his case, particularly a Post story from 2005, from my then-colleague Phil Pan, on Chen’s work highlighting the problem of forced abortions and sterilizations in Linyi City, Shandong province.
The phone that was used in the van belonged to an embassy staff member — one of the only people aboard who had thought to bring a mobile device. Locke apparently just took the phone to make sure it was me who answered, before passing it along to Chen. The embassy was subsequently deluged with calls from reporters, who accused the staff of playing favorites with the press.
If you read that excerpt above, there's something missing. We got the Who, What, When, Where...but no "Why".
PB
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