Chen Guangcheng has recently published an article about the CCP’s punishment of families of human rights activists in communist China. The article, on public discourse, is titled “Zhulian: Implication by Relation”. The article can be found at humanrights.catholic.edu under our Research and Analyses page. 

Will Deatherage: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China. My name is Will Deatherage, the producer. Joining me, as always, is Chen Guangcheng. 

Chen Guangcheng: Hello, everyone. I’m glad to see you here again today. 

Will Deatherage: Yes, today we’re covering a very important news story. This happened in late August of 2024 to our friend, the human rights sculptor, Chen Wei Ming. He gave us a brief statement that he wants people to hear. Guangcheng, can you tell us about what happened to Chen Wei Ming? 

Chen Guangcheng: Yes, I think before we have a podcast episode that mentions Freedom Park in California. Chen Wei Ming is an artist, and he uses sculpture to show the people what the CPP is doing. Of course, the CCP was hurt, so the CCP ordered thugs several times to Freedom Park to destroy the sculptures. This has happened several times. On August 19, we suspect the CCP sent thugs to burn his army of sculptures. Some people live there, but no one was hurt. Of course, they wanted to burn his house, but I think there was not enough time to do that.

Will Deatherage: Before we go into what happened that day, why do we suspect that the CCP might have done this before? 

Chen Guangcheng: The CCP has sent the thugs before to burn his sculpture about the CCP virus. 

Will Deatherage: That was in 2021?

Chen Guangcheng: 2022 I believe. At that time, the police arrested the thugs and the thugs said CCP asked them to do that. 

Will Deatherage: I think the FBI got involved, and then there was one earlier this summer, right? Can you talk about what they did to the Tank Man statue?

Chen Guangcheng: Yeah, they destroyed the tank man and the tanks. The CCP tried to threaten him several times. Now, Chen Wei Ming is doing some sculptures about Hitler. Chen Wei Ming tried to put Hitler’s head, Stalin’s head, Xi Jinping’s head, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zheng; all the CCP’s leaders’ heads together. 

Will Deatherage: So it’s like one sculpture with all their heads together.

Chen Guangcheng: Yes, more than 20 of the most evil authoritarian leaders. He tried to use that to make a sculpture, and we’ll show it next year around June 4, which is the Tiananmen Square Anniversary. On August 19, around 11 o’clock, Chen Wei Ming got a call that his residential RVs were burning, so he drove there and the police and the fire truck were there. Until now, we didn’t get any information from the police station. I think the CCP just wanted to stop and threaten him.

Will Deatherage: He also mentioned, when I spoke on the phone with him last week, that there was a human rights activist who was scheduled to visit him next week. A man who tried starting a different party in China at some point. Did you hear about this?

Chen Guangcheng: Yes, I heard that. Some people worked for the CCP’s military, and now because they understand the CCP’s evilness, they’ve tried to create an organization there and to push for democracy in mainland China. I think the CCP is scared or angry, so they used this as a way to try to stop him.

Will Deatherage: Whoever did this, did they burn down the sculpture he was working on or did they just get his tools? Do you know to what extent things were affected by the fire?

Chen Guangcheng: From what I know, they destroyed the unfinished sculpture and the tools. 

Will Deatherage: As Guangcheng said, while we can’t confirm quite yet that the CCP did this, the fact that they’ve done it before, and this was right before a human rights activist came to visit him, seems to imply that they did it for sure.

Chen Guangcheng: Yes. Different activists from different countries try to visit the park.

Will Deatherage: You’ve been there?

Chen Guangcheng: Yeah, I’ve been there.

Will Deatherage: How can people support this movement?

Chen Guangcheng: People can obviously support him financially, to purchase some material for the sculptures. He will appreciate it and I think that is useful. His website is libertysculpturepark.com. I hope, if you can, you can help him.

Will Deatherage: We’ll continue tracking this event, and we encourage people to follow us. Our podcast on YouTube, Spotify, and social media. You can find all that at humanrights.catholic.edu Guangcheng, thank you so much for sharing this story with us.

Chen Guangcheng: Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

Chen Weiming: My name is Weiming Chen. A couple years ago, our park, the CCP Virus Sculpture, was burning. After many years, the FBI caught the organizer, which seems to be the Chinese government. We are sure that the Chinese government burned down the CCP Virus  Sculpture this year before the Tiananmen Square memorial, June 4. They damaged “Tank Man”, another of our statues. Now the two RVs that were used for my home and studio were burnt down and absolutely destroyed. Next week, we will welcome a very important Chinese Democratic Party leader, who was in jail for 16 years. The Chinese security police just called him and said, “Hi, we know you’re now in America. Don’t go into the sculpture park.”

Will Deatherage: So you’re saying that someone from the Communist Party of the Chinese government called him and told him not to go to your event next week?

Chen Weiming: Yes. I think the American people should wake up. American people should know about the CCP. They want to make trouble for all the world. This is very, very important. We still push and struggle for the Chinese democracy movement for human rights. Thank you very much.

The Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights has published a documentary on the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The documentary features world class human rights experts, from former State Department officials to ambassadors and human rights activists. It can be found on our website at humanrights.catholic.edu.