Word: chen
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...first learned of Chen Guangcheng was one of the first kind. Chen had beaten the odds. He'd grown up blind in a remote village in a country where people with disabilities aren't allowed to attend college. That meant three strikes against his ever amounting to much: China may be brimming with opportunity, but not for handicapped, uneducated peasants. The odds didn't deter Chen. He educated himself in the law by having relatives read to him, and then used his expertise to help others like him. He became a "barefoot lawyer," offering counsel to peasants with disabilities despite...
...Friday was the second kind of day. At 2:30 p.m. in Shandong's Yinan county, Chen, 34, went on trial on trumped-up charges of illegal assembly and intent to damage public property - charges that seem designed as retaliation by officials whose misdeeds he had exposed. Dozens of supporters who had come to stand by him had to spend the afternoon gathered outside the courthouse. Barring their entry were some 200 uniformed police. Also absent from the courtroom were Chen's defense lawyers, three of whom had spent the previous evening confined to a local police station...
...Friday was one of many such days Chen has had over the past year. Last September, he showed up in Beijing to publicize the plight of his latest clients: victims of a brutal campaign of late-term abortions and forced sterilizations carried out by local officials in clear violation of Chinese laws. National family-planning officials would eventually acknowledge that rules had been violated. But being in the right offered Chen no protection. Just hours after he met with my colleague Hannah Beech, security officials from his hometown arrived to shut him up. They forced him into...
...then, Chen had become an inspiration to a group of idealistic Chinese lawyers - themselves optimists about the power of law to transform Chinese society. These lawyers became legal activists for the legal activist. They publicized his case through essays circulated on the Internet. They filed complaints about his unlawful detention with officials at various levels of government. They kept the foreign media informed. They also tried, on a fairly regular basis, to meet with their client. They often failed - on at least one occasion, badly. In October when three of the lawyers - Xu Zhiyong, Li Subin and Li Fangping - tried...
...that in some respects, the anguish among Chinese over dogs being culled may well be proxy for the poor, defenseless fellow citizens that the Chinese are not encouraged to sympathize with or given the opportunity to have feelings for. If Chinese papers were allowed, for example, to report on Chen Guangcheng, a blind peasant activist who's been repeatedly beaten and is now in jail for standing up for the victims of illegal forced abortions and who's due to go on trial on trumped-up charges of destroying public property this month, I'm sure his case would generate...