Chen Guangcheng to Leave New York University


2013.06.14
china-chen-guangcheng-april-2013.jpg Chen Guangcheng (L) at a congressional hearing in Washington, April 9, 2013.
RFA

Blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng will leave New York University (NYU), where he has been a visiting law scholar since his escape from house arrest last year, in the summer.

But NYU law professor Jerome Cohen, who was instrumental in bringing Chen to the university to study after he took refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, has denied the move is linked to any political pressure from the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

Cohen, who has acted as Chen's mentor and adviser since hurried diplomatic talks following the activist's daring midnight flight from his heavily guarded hometown in Shandong's Yinan county, rejected reports that Chen was "booted out" of NYU, which is planning to build a campus in Shanghai.

"I am grateful to the university administration for its extraordinary generosity, which could not reasonably be expected to go on indefinitely," he told the Washington Post in an e-mail.

"No political refugee, even Albert Einstein, has received better treatment by an American academic institution than that received by Chen from NYU,” Cohen said, dismissing reports of political pressure as "highly distorted."

Cohen added that he had "never heard a word from anyone, including Chinese diplomats" suggesting that the Chinese government was putting pressure on NYU to send Chen away.

The report in the New York Post newspaper had said that NYU was expelling Chen from its campus to satisfy demands from Beijing and to ease the approval process for its Shanghai campus.

Disappointed

Shandong-based rights activist Wang Xuezhen said she was disappointed by the move, however.

"There has indeed been some pressure applied here," Wang said. "They are giving them this kind of financial support, so there are conditions to be met in return."

"I am very disappointed with the attitude of New York University."

While Chen hasn't commented publicly on his impending move, a spokesman for New York's Fordham University confirmed that the university's law school was "in negotiations" with Chen over his future study plans, but gave no further details.

Meanwhile, activists fear that local authorities in the family's home village of Dongshigu may seek further retaliation over Chen's visit to rival Taiwan, which has been governed separately from the mainland since 1949, but which Beijing regards as a renegade province awaiting reunification.

Nanjing-based rights activist He Peirong, who helped Chen escape armed guards posted around his village, said his Taiwan trip could prompt an angry reaction from Beijing.

"I think Chen Guangcheng's trip to Taiwan will spark a huge reaction from the government," she said.

"But I can't comment on the New York University situation, because I don't really know about it."

Chen's brother, Chen Guangfu, whose family was recently targeted with posters denouncing them as criminals, as well as bricks, dead chickens and ducks, agreed that more trouble could be on the way.

"That is entirely possible, but there's nothing we can do to defend ourselves against it," he said.

"They always make their moves in the middle of the night."

Plans abandoned

He said the family had abandoned plans to visit the dissident on his forthcoming trip to Taiwan.

Chen Guangfu and his mother were denied a passport for months following Chen's escape in late April 2012.

However, the authorities later relented ahead of an informal California summit between President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, earlier this month.

Chen Guangfu said he and his mother had also put on hold plans to visit Chen, his wife Yuan Weijing and the couple's two children in the U.S., until after Chen had returned from Taiwan.

While Chen's ailing mother has followed his progress closely, keeping in touch by telephone, she has said in previous interviews that she has no desire for her son to return to China, which she likened to "living in a prison."

Chen Guangcheng, a self-taught lawyer who exposed forced abortions under the China's one-child policy and defended the rights of ordinary people, was jailed for four years in 2006 for "disrupting traffic and damaging property."

After 18 months of house arrest in Shandong's Dongshigu village, Chen Guangcheng outwitted his guards and made his way to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where Chinese and American officials eventually struck a deal allowing him and his family to go to New York to study.

Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service and by Wen Yuqing for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

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