You’re listening to part two of a Barefoot Lawyer Reports podcast in which Bob Fu, founder and president of China Aid, explains how he helped Chen Guangcheng escape from communist China to the United States. To listen to part one, please check the link in the description.

Bill Saunders: So that’s the situation. And it came very close to Guangcheng being returned to the Chinese Communist Party. But what broke the stalemate, Bob? You were involved in it. What happened in Congress that you were involved in that really broke the stalemate and made sure he would get out?

Bob Fu: I mean, after Guangcheng was “persuaded” from basically walking out of the U.S. Embassy, from his refuge over there and with the absolute security protection in the Embassy, and then under that deal, right? He was supposed to go to the hospital and do a medical check to make sure that he’s supposed to be free, and sent to any good university in Shanghai and Tianjin. Who would believe that the Communist Party would fulfill that? 

Bill Saunders: Nobody.

Bob Fu: At least from my experience. I said, “That must be a good trick.” And I mean, the same night, thank God, I was able to get hold of Guangcheng and Guangcheng told me: “No, my two children are crying. They’re starving them. They’re not even giving them food.” All the U.S. diplomats who were promised to stay there were forced to leave, and the whole hospital became a prison for him. So that was the time I just called Congress. I mean, Congressman Smith. I said this is the time we need to speak up, to change the gear. And, thankfully, Congressman Smith and Congressman Wolf, they quickly put an emergency hearing. I remember I was rushed to the West Texas airport with the last flight to Houston, I believe. And we didn’t have a direct flight to D.C. anymore that time. I was calling anyone to try to get Guangcheng’s other phone number so that it won’t be cut off. I know Guangcheng has several, but you know, the Communist Party, they are there, right? Monitoring.

Bill Saunders: Yes.

Bob Fu: So I was worried. My thought was that we have to have Guangcheng himself directly talk to the world, to the U.S. Congress, and the American people. So by the time I got there, well, before I got there, a former NPR Beijing reporter, Robert Gifford, was there. At that time, I think he started working for Newsweek. He basically gave me another phone number for me to prepare. And, guess what? During the congressional hearing, the first half, my staff kept calling, no success. I said, “Oh, that’s so bad.” So the chair had to call recess and basically said, “Oh, can we do it again?” So I went outside the hall of the hearing room, and guess what? I called through. It was midnight. I said, “Guangcheng, can you talk?” He said, “Yes, I’m ready.” So we went behind the doors. Congressman Wolf, I remember, still tried to verify that it was Guangcheng’s own will, right? Knowing the risk that Congress would allow him to testify.

Bill Saunders: Right. Because it was a great risk that he was.

Bob Fu: Oh, yeah.

Bill Saunders: Yeah. I mean, anything could have happened to him. And to the people listening again. To sum that up, people in Congress who supported freeing Guangcheng convened a special hearing. Bob Fu got Guangcheng on the phone and Guangcheng testified over the phone to a congressional hearing.

Bob Fu: Yes. It was on my first iPhone, so that iPhone became a symbol. I basically used the iPhone to translate for Guangcheng right next to the chairman’s hearings. The chair, actually. Congressman Smith was censored, almost for asking to hold a witness.

Bill Saunders: That’s true. 

Bob Fu: You know, that’s against the rules. Chris Smith said, “Who cares about that? We have the life of Guangcheng at stake.” So that was kind of the moment, I think, a really pivotal moment for the victory of freedom.

Bill Saunders: Yeah. Key thing to tell us about from your side: What was it like when you were in the embassy and then they kind of struck this deal and sent you to the hospital? Tell us, what were you thinking about between then and the time you testified over the phone?

Guangcheng Chen: That is a long story, but you know, when we just got there, all the officials in the embassy were so excited, everyone who knew about this tried to find a different way to support me. I remember in detail, when my three bones broke in my foot, right? But we can’t go to the hospital. So they asked for a doctor to come to my room to see me. And he said, “Oh, maybe, two or three bones were broken.”

Another official said, “How can we can know more details?” He said, “We can’t. We don’t have a way to know the details because we don’t have an X-ray.”  The official said, “Okay, can we use the X-ray at the gate for when people come in, since the embassy has to check.” 

Bill Saunders: I see. Yeah.

Guangcheng Chen: Yeah. And the doctor said, “No, if we only care the first time, we can use that.” And another officer said, “Okay, we can buy a new one.” Well, then the doctor said, “What?” Then the official said there was no problem. Because our Congress very, very, much supports him. So, that’s a detail. And after 27, in Chinese time at night, Obama had an important meeting. A lot of people sat together in the White House. Their leaders have decided that we can’t let human rights destroy the relationship between the U.S. and the Communist Party. We have to resolve this problem in 24 or 36 hours. What they meant at the time is that I had to go. I had to leave.

Bill Saunders: You had to go back to the CCP.

Guangcheng Chen: Yes. So later, they gave me more and more pressure and kept asking me to leave. That’s a long story. In the beginning they said, “Okay, when you come to the hospital, you live in this room. We will live next door.” So yeah, that was the official promise.

Bill Saunders: That they would be next door to you.

Guangcheng Chen: Yes. 

Bill Saunders: You would be protected. 

Guangcheng Chen: Yes. And, you know, when we came there, a lot of media came to surround the hospital. The Communist Party ordered a lot of police to surround the hospital, and ordered more than 400 people to wear different clothes in the hospital. 

Bill Saunders: I don’t understand. Wear different clothes?

Bob Fu: Plant police.

Bill Saunders: Oh, so they look like doctors.

Bob Fu: Look like medical staff. Yeah.

Guangcheng Chen: Maybe they wore doctor’s clothes. Maybe they wore normal clothes to be in secret, but that’s not true. They work for the Communist Party. When we came into the room, I couldn’t find any officials from the embassy. Then I called them–

Bill Saunders: On the cell phone.

Guangcheng Chen: Yeah. I called them. No one answered. I called the cell phone. I called the office phone. I called a different phone number with the embassy. No one answered. So later, my wife wrote a short text to someone. He said we have no answer. Only when we came into the room I got a message that said, we have to go. That’s all we got.

Bill Saunders: So you essentially were abandoned there and you couldn’t contact anybody in the embassy, what did you do? Did you then reach out to people? Try to reach out to people?

Guangcheng Chen: Yeah. Then I had  to call my friend in Beijing to discuss that. At that time, in fact, in my mind, I knew I had to leave. I have to escape again from mainland China to America. Before I escaped from my home to Beijing. Now we have to find a way to do that again. But I knew the Communist Party was listening to my phone, so I didn’t want to let them know what I wanted to do. So I tried to call my friend and tell them the situation. My good friend Hu Jia’s wife, Deng Jinyan. And when we talked, she said, “Do you know what you are doing?” I said, “Sister, I don’t know. I can’t continue to stay in the embassy.” And then I told her what happened and she said, “We have to tell the media immediately.” I said, “Okay, you tell them. Let them interview me.” 

So she called them and told them what was happening. Then the media called me and I told them what was happening. But after 9:50, the Communist Party stopped my phone. The phone now doesn’t work. My friend told the media already and the media called me already, right? And they wrote an article and shared it with the whole world. A lot of people mentioned that. So after midnight, the Communist Party opened my phone again.

Bill Saunders: After midnight?

Guangcheng Chen: Yes. So later, after the hearing, the important hearing, the phone could call, and maybe before when Bob Fu tried to call me, it didn’t work. Maybe at that time the phone didn’t work, but later when he called me, it worked because the Communist Party changed their mind. Maybe that time they were discussing their next step, putting him back in Shandong or letting him keep talking.

Bill Saunders: Throw him out. 

Guangcheng Chen: So later when the media criticized the Obama administration more and more and more, they had to let me have the phone.

Bob Fu: Yeah, I remember that was actually at the time, the U.S. and China had a very high stake diplomatic event, called the “U.S. China strategic and economic dialogue.” The secretary of State Hillary Clinton was there. I think that helped to highlight the issue. 

Bill Saunders: Yeah. Hillary Clinton was in China at the time.

Bob Fu: Yes.

Bill Saunders: Yeah. So, Bob, from your perspective, after the hearing and all this publicity, did things move pretty quickly to get him out of China after that?

Bob Fu: Very quickly, right?

Guangcheng Chen: Yeah, yeah. You know, at that time, even 1 second is so, so important.

Bill Saunders: 1 second, yeah.

Guangcheng Chen: If you try to do something one second before, it can be successful, just one second after and it can fail. It’s a very narrow window. 

Bob Fu: Oh, a very narrow window. If you read Secretary Clinton’s memoir, she wrote something about it during that time. It was also a presidential campaigning season. I remembered her opponent, Mitt Romney, the republican candidate actually issued– 

Bill Saunders: A very strong statement on Guangcheng for getting Guangcheng out.

Bob Fu: Yeah. Specifically about him. He said it was the darkest day of U.S. human rights diplomacy, by having Guangcheng, by letting him walk out of the U.S. Embassy, and losing the protection in the hands of the Communist Party again.

Bill Saunders: Yeah. It’s just interesting, again, for people listening, human rights diplomacy, so much of it is about bringing things to the attention of as many people as possible so nothing is hidden. And once Guangcheng’s story got out there, I mean, his story had been out there in a sense, before, but now this was the more dramatic part. The person who everybody had been campaigning for to be released from jail and to have his freedom was now being turned from the U.S. Embassy back to the CCP. I mean, that’s pretty good leverage, I think, for Guangcheng, because it must have embarrassed the U.S. tremendously.

Bob Fu: Oh, I mean, it was the second time in the history of the People’s Republic of China that somebody walked into the U.S. Embassy. The first time was that physicist, the scientist, professor, Fang Li Zhi, during the Tiananmen Square massacre, he and his wife were escorted and accepted into the U.S. Embassy. It took quite some time of the highest level diplomacy and a lot of under the table deals.

Bill Saunders: Yeah. So, that’s the story I want our listeners to hear. As I said, Guangcheng’s book, you should read it. But also if you go on our website, which is catholic.edu/chr, CHR stands for Center for Human Rights. You’ll see pictures, you’ll see pictures of Bob Fu with Congressman Smith. At the hearing, you’ll see pictures of the people campaigning with the sunglasses campaign. You’ll see TIME and Newsweek. And you can read more about this. 

But, to me, it’s fascinating for many, many reasons, but it takes so many people to have this human rights triumph. At first, it took an incredible person in Guangcheng and his wife to have their iron will. But there’s so many people to help get the story out, so many like Bob and to lead international campaigns and Chris Smith and Frank Wolf and members of the Democrat Party, too, who supported Guangcheng in Congress, to get him out of prison and get him out of jail. So it’s kind of evidence that you can do something if everybody works together, you can make a difference. You can’t do it if you don’t work together. So, Guangcheng, anything else you want to say?

Guangcheng Chen: Yeah, I want to tell the listeners, there’s much more detail in my memoir. If you want to know, please read it. And I still remember, after I sent the video outside, I wished for the world to know that. And in 2011, February 9th, I heard my voice from outside in the short video. And I heard for the first time Bob Fu talk on VOE for around 1 hour. He talked about my kids, talked about what I’m talking about in the video. And at that time, I told my wife, okay, the whole world knows our treatment from the Communist Party. We need to all try to find a way to better prepare for that. After only nine days, the Communist Party ordered 80 thugs to come to our house and beat us. Happened three times in one month. 

Bob Fu: The family paid a heavy price, of course.

Guangcheng Chen: Yeah, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Bill Saunders: But in the end, he got to America.

Bob Fu: Happy ending.

Bill Saunders: Yes, a very happy ending.

Guangcheng Chen: Yes, yes, the ending is very, very good. I will never forget about that. This is why I spend a lot of time doing human rights work here, to let the whole world know how evil the CCP is, to let the American people understand that the Communist Party tried to infiltrate the U.S. We have to stand up to stop that.

Bill Saunders: Yep. So now we’ll conclude this episode of the Barefoot Lawyer. You can find all of those on our website, and my producer will give you further information.