When A Blind Activist Eluded Chinese Agents

From the Gallery; Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng jumped scaled a high wall and fled the darkened village. From there, he traveled nearly 400 miles to Beijing. His escape was made all the more remarkable by a simple fact: The 40-year-old Chinese dissident has been blind since childhood. “His story,” said friend and fellow activist Hu Jia, “is the Chinese version of ‘The Shawshank Redemption, ” reports the Wasingtonpost.com His flight is a severe blow to China’s vast and lavishly funded internal security system. China, according to budget figures released last month, will spend $111 billion on internal security this year — $5 billion more than the military will get. Chen, a prominent legal activist infuriated party officials by rallying opposition to forced sterilizations and other aspects of China’s family-planning regime, and was jailed from 2006 to 2010. Chen was technically free but under 24-hour surveillance for the last 19 months. He was barred from making phone calls or receiving visitors. Living under the watchful eye of the world’s biggest security apparatus, his every movement closely monitored. So for a blind man to elude one of the world's survaillance team is a show of man's resilience. In the days leading to his escape, Chen pretended to be sick, this clearly hoodwikned the details of layers of security imposed around his tumbledown home. The blind lawyer first tried to escape last year by digging a tunnel with his family members. But guards quickly discovered it, foiling the plan when the tunnel was only a few yards long. Chen’s success in eluding the legions of police and plain-clothes security agents that blanket much of China adds another layer of mystery to a case that has long caused bafflement. It has also highlighted the role of one of the Communist Party’s biggest irritants — a network of well-organized and committed activists ready to take grave personal risks to combat what they see as intolerable injustices.