Security personnel in eastern China are carrying out a nightly harassment campaign against the brother of Chinese rights activist Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠), the two said yesterday, throwing rocks, bottles and dead poultry at his house for 12 nights in a row.
The attacks on the village home of Chen Guangfu (陳光福) continued early yesterday, he said. Two cars parked outside his house in Shandong Province, shining their headlights through the windows and again security personnel threw rocks and beer bottles at the house and into the yard, he said.
“This is a country of hoodlums, not a country of law,” Chen Guangcheng said of China from New York, where he is studying law at New York University.
Photo: Reuters
“If you have principles, if you do what is right, why are you afraid of people?” he said. “Why do these kinds of things in the middle of the night? What kind of person does this? Only thieves and the narrow-minded, spreading unchecked. But that’s how the [Chinese] Communist Party [CCP] is now.”
Chen Guangcheng made world headlines last year when he escaped house arrest and spent 20 hours on the run alone before meeting up with supporters who helped get him to Beijing where he was given refuge at the US embassy. He was then allowed permission to go to the US to study.
Chen Guangfu, 56, said the attacks started on April 18, the same day his brother was put on a village CCP blacklist for his plans to visit Taiwan and, the party said, Tibet.
“They said he is planning to go to Taiwan to work on Taiwan independence, and to go to Tibet to support Tibet independence,” Chen Guangfu said.
Chen Guangcheng has accepted an invitation to visit Taiwan next month.
Reached in at his home in Dongshigu village, Chen Guangfu said the security personnel arrived just after 2am yesterday, around the same time they had been arriving since April 18.
“They don’t speak, they just do this,” he said. “They throw things, put up little posters, they uproot my trees, pull out the vegetables my mother has been growing — these kinds of things to try to scare us.”
Police did not answer calls made from his telephone, he said, and had refused to investigate the attacks.
He also said his son, Chen Kegui (陳克貴), has been denied medical parole, although he is suffering from appendicitis.
Chen Kegui has been subjected to beatings and mistreatment since he fought with officials who stormed his house a year ago to look for his uncle. He was sentenced to three years in prison, and on the one monthly visit he’s allowed, he told his father on Thursday last week that he was in pain and had appendicitis, according to the Washington-based prisoner advocacy group Freedom Now.
Chen Guangfu said he tried to see his son again on Monday at Linyi prison, but was rebuffed and told Kegui’s application for medical parole was denied.
Additional reporting by AP
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of