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 to confront challenges posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“The CCP is an enemy of humanity. It is terrorizing its own people and it is threatening the well-being of the world,” Chen said as one of the speakers at the Republican National Convention (RNC) on Wednesday night.
Wednesday marks the third night of RNC, held under the theme “Land of Heroes,” according to a statement from the Trump campaign.
Chen added: “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 tens of thousands being thrown into prison, brainwashing centers, and labor camps.
In June last year, U.S. ambassador for religious freedom Sam Brownback said that Beijing’s “war on faith” will fail, in a speech at the Heritage Foundation, a U.S. think tank.
Others like Chen are political dissidents who challenge 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.
Chen was imprisoned in 2006 following his class-action lawsuit against local authorities in eastern China’s Shandong Province over excessive enforcement of the one-child policy. He was then sentenced to four years and three months in prison for “damaging property and disrupting traffic.”
After serving his sentence, Chen was released in 2010 but he 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.
In July, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on free nations to “induce change in the CCP’s behavior” in a speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California.
Chen added on Wednesday night: “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.
Chen pointed to the current pandemic, which is caused by the CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, as an example how the CCP poses a threat to the entire world.
Beijing initially went to great lengths to conceal the spread of the CCP virus, silencing eight whistleblower doctors—among them ophthalmologist Li Wenliang—after they took to Chinese social media to warn about a new form of pneumonia in late December.
In May, Trump told reporters at the White House that the pandemic has been the “worst attack” on the United States.
“[I]t 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.
From The Epoch Times
