To hear about why Reggie Littlejohn dedicated so much time and passion to rescuing Chen Guangcheng, check out part two of this interview series, in which she discusses her organization’s role in translating and publishing his report on forced abortions in communist China. The link is in the description. 

Will Deatherage: As Guangcheng’s name was gaining notoriety and traction through his case throughout the country, how did your role in getting him out of house arrest and imprisonment evolved from there? What did it kind of look like as everything was happening as he was getting out of a house arrest, escaping?

Reggie Littlejohn: Okay, these are geopolitical things, and I don’t claim to have had anything to do with his getting out of house arrest, except the following, which is activating prayer. The story of how he escaped is incredibly miraculous, and I believe that it could only have happened by the power of God.

I had been going around and asking for prayer for him, and several times, several groups, if I was speaking at a conference, the conference would just stop, and we would all 200, 300, 500, however many people were there, would lift up a prayer for Chen Guangcheng.

And I was on Voice of America a number of times. And one time a rumor went out saying Chen Guangchen had died. And I felt in my spirit that he had not died, because I felt that I would know if he had died. He had no idea who I was. But I was completely connected to him, you know, because he was the focus of my life. There was a year, I think, I traveled, I don’t know, 200 days, 300 days. I do know that my husband said to me he had to fly to different cities if he wanted to see me. I was just not home. He said to me, “If I could just get 10% of all the time and love and passion that you give to Chen Guangcheng, I would be happy.” That was terrible. God bless my husband for putting up with those years where my focus was just laser beamed onto Chen Guangcheng.

I felt he had not died. And so I went on to Voice of America, and I said, “You may have heard the rumor that Chen Guangchen has died. I believe he has not died. I believe he is near death.” 

Because when he escaped, when he was let out of prison, he had, I think it was some terrible intestinal, like, dysentery that was untreated. And then they also beat him and his wife, Wei Jing, and didn’t you know, just beat them to a pulp and did not allow them to seek medical attention. And also there was a situation where they eventually prevented them from going out and getting food. They had, like, nothing to eat, little scratching from their garden. It was credible that he could have died right while he was in house arrest. 

And so I said, “I don’t, I don’t believe he is dead. I believe he’s near death. And I believe that the only way that he will survive is to escape. And of course, to escape is impossible.” He had, I don’t know how many guards, at least 24, in eight hour shifts. He had beams beaming into his home. The village was cut off. They did everything they could to make sure that he would not escape, and it was humanly impossible for him to escape.

But I said on Voice of America, I said, “I call on every person of faith to pray now for Chen Guangcheng to escape, because that is the only way he’s going to survive. And then when he does escape, everyone will know that God did it.”

And then when he did escape, it was totally miraculous. Totally miraculous. And everybody, people who are completely atheist said, this is a miracle. But in raising the visibility of all of this, I did something that we called the sunglasses campaign, because, as everybody knows, Chen Guangchen wears sunglasses.

People from all over the world took a picture of themselves wearing sunglasses and sent and emailed them to me, and I put them up on our website. And then also there was an artist whose pen name was Krazy Crab that compiled a lot of those sunglasses portraits into a large portrait of Chen Guangcheng that I made into a banner.

There’s a picture of me with Congressman Chris Smith, both of us standing on either side of that banner, the face of Chen Wenchen made of other people wearing sunglasses. And we were wearing sunglasses. After Chen Wenchen escaped and came to the United States, there’s another picture of us standing together, the three of us together, after having made a presentation at heritage.

We were there with a real Chen Guangcheng in the middle. It’s so great to put those two photographs together. I also launched a petition for him. And just basically, I don’t know how many newsletters, I don’t know how many press releases I appeared on, many, many news organs about him just raising the visibility.

So what happened then is that when he escaped, that hit the news internationally, and people had already known, because of my previous advocacy, who he was, and then it was able to have this international groundswell of support for the Chinese government to let him go and for the American government to let him in. And that is its own saga, which you can read about in his book, The Barefoot Lawyer.

Will Deatherage: Yeah, yeah. By the way, a lot of the images that you’ve mentioned, for those who are listening on Spotify or Apple podcasts will have those playing as visuals on YouTube, Facebook, and our other visual platforms. So you’ll be able to watch along those as well. If you see the video version of this podcast.

Now, Reggie, do you remember where you were precisely when it was revealed that he had indeed escaped and what was going on?

Reggie Littlejohn: Yes. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I was in Ireland, to testify at the Irish Doll, their parliament, about Chen Guangcheng and about the one child policy. A group of us went and took pictures of Chen Guan Chen, and wore glasses in front of the Chinese Embassy in Dublin. And that I mentioned Pearl, that I was in contact with in China, I was on Skype with her almost all night. She was very worried, because she said that. And Chen Guangcheng had escaped and that they’re gonna come after her. So she and I were talking through the night until the point where she was gone, and then I knew that they had detained her.

So that’s where I was. And then I flew to D.C., and there was the whole drama about whether or not China’s gonna let him go and whether the United States was gonna let him in. That lasted, it felt like weeks, but it probably wasn’t that long, but it was a long time.

I had just testified before Congress, and I flew back to my home in San Jose at the time. It was about 10:00 at night and I had just gotten off the plane. My bags were still packed by the door. And I was looking at what’s the newest on Chen Guangcheng because I’d been on the plane all day, and then I got a text message from a reporter saying, “I’m on the plane with Chen Guangcheng. I’m on the plane.” And that’s all. And I immediately texted back, “Which airport?” And didn’t hear back. So I didn’t know which airport it was.

I didn’t know what time they were landing. But what I did know is that I was going to have to take a red eye to D.C. immediately. So I didn’t even unpack. I just turned around and went to the airport. On the way, I found out which flight he was on and which airport arrived the next morning, having had no sleep that night.

There’s pictures of me with Chris Smith together, getting in many interviews with us. When Chen Guangcheng landed, we were not allowed to see him. You know, I feel like the government did not want him to have hundreds of people gathered at the airport. The government did not want him to have the hero’s welcome that everybody wanted to give him.

They took him through some back way and sent him to his apartment at NYU, where he was allowed to speak. He didn’t get to see the hundreds or thousands of people that had gathered at the airport. The whole thing is just burned into my memory.

Will Deatherage: Yeah, of course. Yeah. Did you ever find out what happened with Pearl?

Reggie Littlejohn: I think that Pearl has been detained on and off, but they’ve always treated her very well. But I’ve kind of lost touch with her. I really have not been in touch with her for a long time. But she did tell me that she got out of detention.

I mean, I testified before Congress on behalf of Pearl when she was detained. When she got out, she told me that they had treated her very well, and she thinks it’s because of the visibility that I and others had given her case.. And that’s something that people can do, is that when you hear about a Chinese dissident, the best thing you can do is you can write to them in prison, if you can get that address.

Sometimes when people give visibility to a case, they’ll give the prison address. Write to them in the prison, or write to your representative concerning them.The higher visibility their cases, the better sometimes they get treated.

Will Deatherage: That’s a really good idea there. 

The Barefoot Lawyer reports on China is proud to announce the publication of a report on Confucius Institutes and the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration of American academic institutions. To read the report, which was published by the Catholic University of America’s center for Human Rights, please go to catholic.edu/chr and visit our research and analyses page.