Woman Goes Missing After Trying to Visit Chen Guangcheng in China

He Peirong, an activist who has kept in contact with blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, went missing when she attempted to visit Chen’s family in Dongshigu, a small village in Shandong Province, China on May 31.

Moments before disappearing He posted emergency messages on Twitter: “I was robbed of over 10,000 yuan (US$1,543) by Shanghou township staff. I was beaten up, tortured and abducted to Tang city which is over 100 km away.”

In January He drove alone from Nanjing to Dongshigu Village to visit Chen. Her car was surrounded and set upon by regime agents.

On May 31, after visiting Dongshigu she was more intensely monitored and not allowed to enter the village.

She went to the county government to report the situation, and requested that authorities allow her to visit Chen and verify that his children are being educated. However, she was intimidated by national security agents and ordered to leave immediately, she said.

Soon afterwards she went missing.

People who follow her on Twitter cannot reach her, according to posts they made, and when the Epoch Times attempted to contact her on June 2, her cell phone was not operational.

Chen Guangcheng, a longtime activist against the Communist Party’s policy of forced abortions, was released on Sept. 9, 2010 and has been in forced confinement in his dusty village home since.

After a videotape of his family being detained by authorities was exposed in February of this year, authorities tightened control. Reports emerged that the Chens suffered violent retaliation, and since have not had much contact with the outside world.

Lawyers and activists who paid attention to the Chen Guangcheng family situation were also suppressed. Teng Biao, Wang Tianyong, Tang Jitian and other lawyers and activists discussed how to support and help Chen Guangcheng’s family during a gathering on Feb. 16 in Beijing. The whole process was monitored by Beijing national security and the participants were later put under varying degrees of pressure.

Chen Guangcheng has been working on human rights issues for many years and assisted lawyers and overseas reporters in exposing forced abortions and sterilizations carried out by family planning officials as part of the regime’s “one child policy.” He was put under house arrest for more than 200 days and later was sentenced to four years and three months prison, accused of “destruction of property and assembling a crowd to disrupt traffic.”

In May 2006, Chen Guangcheng was listed in Time magazine’s “2006’s Top 100 People Who Shape Our World.”