Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese human rights lawyer who fled China and arrived in the United States in 2012, has called on democratic countries and voters to support President Donald Trump in confronting challenges posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“In China, expressing beliefs or ideas not approved by the CCP—religion, democracy, human rights—can lead to prison. The nation lives under mass surveillance and censorship.”
China’s communist regime has persecuted millions of people of faith, including Christians, Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong is a spiritual practice with moral teachings and meditative exercises that has been subjected to state-wide persecution since July 1999, with hundreds of thousands being detained and tortured inside prisons, brainwashing centers, and labor camps.
Political dissidents such as Chen are challenging the CCP’s one-party rule.
“When I spoke out against China’s ‘one child’ policy and other injustices, I was persecuted, beaten, sent to prison, and put under house arrest by the Chinese Communist Party,” Chen said.
Beijing began enforcing the one-child policy in 1979, and families that didn’t comply were subjected to heavy fines, forced abortions, and sterilization. The policy was eventually lifted in 2016.
After serving his sentence, Chen was released in 2010 but was subsequently put under house arrest.
“In April 2012, I escaped and was given shelter in the American Embassy in Beijing. I am forever grateful to the American people for welcoming me and my family to the United States, where we are now free,” Chen said.
Chen had a message for the Trump administration and other democratic governments around the world.
“The U.S. must use its values of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law to gather a coalition of other democracies to stop CCP’s aggression,” Chen said.
Chen added on Aug. 26: “President Trump has led on this and we need the other countries to join him in this fight—a fight for our future.
“We need to support, vote, and fight for President Trump ... for the sake of the world.”
Before his speech at the RNC, Chen spoke to the New York-based broadcaster NTD, a sister media of The Epoch Times.
“It should have never happened. It could have been stopped at the source. It could have been stopped in China. It should have been stopped right at the source, and it wasn’t,” Trump said at the time.