The blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, known for his harrowing escape from Chinese house arrest in 2012, has called on US citizens to vote for Donald Trump for the “sake of the world”.
Speaking at the largely online Republican convention on Wednesday, Chen called the Chinese Communist party (CCP) an “enemy of humanity” and said Trump had led a coalition of other democracies to “stop CCP aggression”.
“It is terrorising its own people and it is threatening the wellbeing of the world. In China expressing beliefs or ideas not approved by the CCP, religion, democracy, human rights, can lead to prison,” he said.
“The US must use its values of freedom, democracy and the rule of law to gather a coalition of other democracies to stop CCP’s aggression,” he said. “We need the other countries to join him in this fight, a fight for our future.”
Following Chen’s speech the former US ambassador Gary Locke, who was serving in Beijing at the time, underlined how it was the Obama-Biden administration that secured the activist’s release.
The endorsement from the prominent dissident underlines how much Trump has centred his re-election bid on taking a hard stance with Beijing.
The Obama-Biden White House stood up to China, authorized the Embassy to rescue Chen Guangcheng from the streets of Beijing, gave him refuge, and secured his release to America.
— GovGaryLocke (@GovGaryLocke) August 27, 2020
Trust me, I was there with @HillaryClinton.
Defending human rights is more than just talk. pic.twitter.com/UBvIUlLMEW
Chen escaped house arrest in 2012 by scaling walls and feeling his way through fields and farmland with a broken foot. He sought refuge at the US embassy in Beijing and became the focus of a diplomatic crisis between the two countries before he was allowed to leave China for the US.
Chen, detailing his experience at the hands of Chinese security agents after speaking out against forced abortions and sterilisations as part of the country’s one-child policy, said: “I was persecuted, beaten, sent to prison and put under house arrest by the CCP.
“Standing up to tyranny isn’t easy. I know. So does the president.”
Chen is among a number of Chinese activists who have found an unlikely hero in Trump who they see as taking a harder line against China. Other rights activists say supporting the president – who allegedly told the Chinese leader Xi Jinping that internment camps in Xinjiang were “exactly the right thing to do” – is antithetical to the cause of human rights.
While the US has placed sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials over a sweeping controversial national security law implemented by Beijing, the president initially referred to pro-democracy protests last year as “riots”. In 2016 he also referred to the 1989 Tiananmen protests that ended in a bloody crackdown by the Chinese military as a “riot”.
Teng Biao, a Chinese human rights lawyer now in the US, said he was dismayed to see Chen speaking at the convention. “I totally agree with Chen that the CCP is the enemy of humanity and is one of the biggest threats to the free world, but Trump is not the person who has fought and will fight the CCP,” he said.
“He does not care about human rights or democracy of China or of the US,” he said. “Given what Trump said on Xinjiang, Hong kong and Tiananmen, given his attitudes toward media, race, women and migrants - it is really absurd for a human rights defender to support Trump.”
