(Chen) Dissident, in U.S., Concerned for Brother After Return to Chinese Village
Source: NY Times
The older brother of Chen Guangcheng, the persecuted rights advocate who left China for the United States this month, is back in the familys home village after evading guards there to travel to Beijing to meet with a lawyer, an American legal scholar who is advising Mr. Chen said Sunday.
The scholar, Jerome A. Cohen, a law professor at New York University, wrote in an e-mail that the brother, Chen Guangfu, was back at home as of Saturday night and unguarded but under great pressure. Like his younger brother, Mr. Chen is from the village of Dongshigu, in Shandong Province, a place infamous for the guards who were assigned by local officials to keep Chen Guangcheng and his family under severe house arrest and to bar any outsiders from seeing them.
After Mr. Chen made a daring nighttime escape last month, police officers detained his older brother and his nephew, Chen Kegui, who was charged with intent to commit homicide when he slashed local officials with a kitchen knife, seriously injuring at least one, after the officials broke into the home of his father following his uncles escape.
Chen Guangfu had left the village in the middle of the night last week to travel to Beijing to meet with a lawyer, Ding Xikui, who had agreed to advocate on behalf of his son. Family members insist the son was acting only in self-defense, since he did not know the men breaking into the home were officials. The sons wife, Liu Fang, sent a letter to the local authorities late last week demanding that her husband be allowed to meet with lawyers.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/world/asia/dissident-in-us-concerned-for-brother-after-return-to-chinese-village.html