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Hu's wife, Zeng Jinyan, posted a photo Friday on Twitter of Chen and Hu together. Chen is wearing the same clothes he wore in the video. Both men are smiling. Chen's escape, if ultimately successful, would boost a beleaguered civil rights community, which has faced rising arrests and other harassment over the past year. If Chen is in the U.S. Embassy or with U.S. officials at another location, it is not known how he would be able to leave or where he could go without Chinese permission. There was no extra security outside the U.S. embassy in Beijing on Saturday. In 1989, when Fang Lizhi, whose speeches inspired student protesters throughout the 1980s, fled with his wife to the U.S. Embassy after China's 1989 military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, he was forced to stay there for 13 months while the countries discussed his fate. Chen's case is more complicated because his wife and daughter are still trapped in Shandong. Fu said Chen's case should be handled through negotiations, like Fang's, and that his family should not suffer any reprisals. China's media have been silent on the case, and most words related to Chen and his village have been blocked online. Chinese political analysts have declined to comment. A self-taught lawyer blinded by fever in infancy, Chen served four years in prison for exposing forced abortions and sterilizations in his and surrounding villages. Since his release in September 2010, local officials confined him to his home, despite the lack of legal grounds for doing so, beating him up on several occasions. Chen was widely admired by rights activists at home who last year campaigned to publicize his case among ordinary Chinese and encourage them to go to Dongshigu village and break the security cordon. Even Hollywood actor Christian Bale tried to visit, but as with many others he was roughed up by locals paid to keep outsiders away. Amnesty International and other human rights groups called on the Chinese government to ensure the safety of Chen and his family, saying they had been abused during 18 months of illegal house arrest.
[Associated
Press;
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