Chen Weiming: The Human Rights Sculptor (Part 1)
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Bill Saunders: Welcome to another podcast of the Barefoot Lawyer Reports. I’m William Saunders, the director of the Center for Human Rights at the Catholic University of America. You can find the Center for Human Rights at catholic.edu/chr. As almost always on the Barefoot Lawyer podcast, we are joined by Chen Guangcheng, who is the distinguished fellow at the Center.
Hello, Guangcheng.
Guangcheng Chen: Hi, Bill. Yeah, hello, everyone. I’m glad to see you on the air again.
Bill Saunders: So we have a special guest on this podcast and I’m going to let Guangcheng introduce him to the listeners.
Guangcheng Chen: Yeah, yeah. He is very famous. He is a sculptor, he did a lot of statues in the U.S. that in California Highway 15. We call it, “Freedom Park.” If you want to understand the Communist Party you can come to Freedom Park to understand what happened in mainland China and here.
He did a lot of human rights jobs, and even the Community Party tried to use their thugs in the U.S. to give him trouble. So today I will let my good friend, his name is Weiming Chen, introduce more details about this. Thank you, everyone.
Bill Saunders: Weiming, welcome to the podcast. I’m sure many listeners know who you are, but some may not. You are a sculptor. Were you a sculptor in China before you came to the United States?
Weiming Chen: Yes, I was. In China, I worked in the government sculpture department for four years. After, I immigrated to New Zealand. Then around 12-13 years ago, I immigrated again to America. I think America is much bigger than I can do my sculpture park. America is more important in the world for art and political democracy.
Bill Saunders: We’re glad to have you in America. Could you tell us why you left China?
Weiming Chen: China’s not a free country. Everything I did sculpting, everything said China is very good. If I would like to criticize socialism things, I would get in trouble. Yes, my studio also had some trouble. I was not happy, so I immigrated.
Bill Saunders: I know that you have the sculpture park like Guangcheng mentioned. My understanding is it’s a park of about 36 acres and it’s in the desert along the interstate 15, I guess in California before you get to Nevada, is that right?
Weiming Chen: Yes, that’s right. It’s beside Highway 15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, in the middle. So, everyone who’s driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles, or San Diego to Las Vegas, can see our sculpture park. Everything’s a work for human rights and freedom and democracy.
Bill Saunders: Well, Weiming, you may be surprised to know that people at Catholic University know of your work because we have one of your pieces, one of your sculptures on Gao Zhisheng. Who is, for the people who don’t know, considered Mr. Human Rights. He is the great champion of human rights in China. But he was “disappeared” by the Chinese Communist Party six years ago. Unfortunately, for six years, we don’t know where he is. We don’t know what’s happened to him. And the Center for Human Rights at Catholic University and Guangcheng have been trying to get the U. S. Government to put pressure on the Chinese Government and to work internationally to find out what’s happened to Gao Guangxian.
Guangcheng, do you want to say anything about that?
Guangcheng Chen: The Gao Zhisheng statue is very important. We set it up in our law college. I think a lot of young people will know who Gao Zhisheng is and what happened to him. And I talked a lot about this last month in the media to let western people understand, the Communist Party kidnapped him for more than six years, and no one knows where he is.
When I tried to support Gao Zhisheng, and our translator helped us to do some things, the Communist Party gave her big pressure to stop her work for our human rights center. That proves the Communist Party knows what is happening in the whole world. They know a lot of people stand up to support Gao Zhisheng. The CCP knows Gao Zhisheng is an influential person. We should use different ways to give the Communist Party big pressure to let the CCP tell the whole world where Gao Zhisheng is. What’s happening about that? Gao Zhisheng never went against Chinese law.
Weiming Chen: Okay, yes. Now, Gao Zhisheng’s been missing for six years. His family is very worried about his life, so last year we used over seven thousand Chinese bullets to make this sculpture for Gao Zhisheng.
Bill Saunders: We will have an event sometime this year to officially dedicate the statue or the sculpture. And perhaps you can be with us. We have done several podcasts about Gao, and we will do more about him because he is both a great man and also representative of all the human rights lawyers and human rights activists whom the CCP has mistreated or killed or put into jail.
So, Weiming, I want to ask you now to tell us about how much of your sculpture park is filled? How many statues do you have? What are your statues about? What do you plan to do?
Weiming Chen: First important sculpture is of, remember Tiananmen Square, the massacre. Another one is “The CCP Virus.” While they say COVID-19 is a virus, I say the CCP is a virus. But unfortunately, two years ago, Chinese spies burned down the sculpture.
Bill Saunders: Which one did they burn down?
Weiming Chen: The CCP Virus.
Bill Saunders: So the CCP is like a virus that makes you sick and better to get rid of it?
Weiming Chen: Yes. The CCP is the communist regime. The virus is COVID-19, which is from the CCP. Also, the head is Xi Jinping. So [the CCP] is very angry. But this is the truth. The leaders organized for COVID-19, so this is [Xi’s] trouble. [Xi Jinping] made trouble for the whole world.
Bill Saunders: They burned it?
Weiming Chen: Yes, they burned it down. The Chinese government said, “This is a problem at American soil this is happening.” I said, “No, this is from China’s labs.” So they are angry. And they did burn it because I used my art, the sculptures, to say that this is from the CCP. So, they burned down this sculpture. At that moment, I made “The CCP Virus II,” so I have the new one there. Now this one used steel. The first was fiberglass, so now they can’t burn it down.
You’ve been listening to part one of a Barefoot Lawyer Reports podcast featuring Chen Weiming. Join us next week to listen to part two.