Word: chen
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...Just a couple hours after our interview, Chen was detained by security officials who had traveled hundreds of miles from Linyi to Beijing. They hustled him into a van and drove him back home. Chen recalled later that he kept asking where they were going but was given no answer. This time, his hands could give him no guidance...
...After depositing Chen at home, Linyi officials kept him under virtual house arrest for more than six months. Despite the harassment, which included several beatings, Chen remained hopeful. After all, a spokesperson at the State Family Planning Commission in Beijing had admitted that Linyi officials had broken the law. Chen waited in confinement for justice to be served. He kept in contact with foreign journalists through smuggled cell phones...
...March, after trying to leave his home without official permission, Chen was again bundled into a police van. No one heard from him for months. Finally in mid-June, the local police announced that he was being held in prison on charges of damaging property and organizing a mob to disturb traffic. High-profile lawyers in Beijing flocked to his defense, calling the charges trumped-up. Meanwhile, the international profile of a blind man from rural China was steadily growing. TIME had named Chen to its annual list of 100 influential people. The U.S. State Department called for his release...
...when a top Beijing lawyer tried to represent Chen in a Linyi court on Aug. 18, he was promptly tossed into jail himself. I began to wonder whether the international attention was doing more harm than good. In previous years, a plea from the U.S. State Department could help get a Chinese political prisoner released, typically as a goodwill gesture before important international summits. But in recent months, foreign pressure appears to have done little. On Friday, for instance, a Chinese researcher for The New York Times, who had been languishing in jail for nearly two years, was sentenced...
...which may have contributed to the speedy course of injustice in Linyi. With his own legal counsel in jail, Chen was represented by two court-appointed lawyers. The trial lasted just two hours. Thursday's announcement of a four-year-and-three-month sentence surprised even those who expected little more than a sham trial; lawyers here agree that similar charges rarely elicit a jail sentence of more than a year. "Chen's case typifies how some local officials can take the law as a personal tool for revenge," says Teng Biao, a university lecturer who has been part...