Blind Chinese rights activist Chen Guangcheng is worried about his relatives in Shandong and wants Communist Party officials to stop targeting them, he said in a May 8 interview with The Epoch Times.
“I desperately hope that the persecution of my family will come to an immediate end,” Chen said.
He reiterated his request to Premier Wen Jiabao for a prompt investigation of the officials responsible for the abuse against him and his family.
“Now I am confined to the bed, with my foot in a plaster cast. I am still not allowed to see my friends or leave the room,” he said in the telephone interview from his bed, inside the heavily guarded Beijing Chaoyang Hospital. “I can’t meet with U.S. officials, except have phone conversations with them. They said they would offer constant help. I won’t make any demands on them.”
At present Chen’s brother, Chen Guangfu, and his wife have returned to their home, but his nephew Chen Kegui is in police detention.
Chen made a daring escape to Beijing on April 22. Five days later, Zhang Jian, vice secretary of the Communist Party of Shuanghou Town, together with a group of men, broke into Chen Guangfu’s house after climbing the wall surrounding the property.
Chen Kegui tried to defend himself with a kitchen knife, wounding several of the men, before calling police. Friends reportedly lost contact with Chen Kegui from then on, and a manhunt for him ensued.
Chen said he was told that his nephew has been detained, and he is worried about him. “With strangers breaking into the home, Kegui was declared guilty for trying to protect himself. What kind of logic is this? I hope that the outside world can keep expressing their concern over this event,” he said.
Chen reiterated his previously made demands to Premier Wen Jiabao via a video recording, asking to ensure his family’s safety and initiate an investigation of the local officials and state officials who have kept him under house arrest and have repeatedly broken into his home and beaten him and his wife.
“I believe the demands I made are fair. I hope that they [the authorities] can give a prompt response. I am asking them to thoroughly investigate the officials in Shandong who committed crimes, and to bring them to justice. This is very important. Besides, I ask them to stop all the illegal persecution so as to safeguard peoples’ rights.”
Regarding his plans to go to the U.S., Chen said: “Yesterday morning [May 7], I entrusted our passport applications to those assigned by the central government to contact me, and also made a direct request. But I have no idea when our passports will be ready.”
Read the original Chinese article.
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