"Brave Chen Guangcheng and his equally courageous wife Yuan Weijing have paid—and continue to pay—an extraordinarily high price for their benign defiance of a dictatorship that violates human rights with impunity and crushes human dignity," said Congressman Chris Smith (NJ-04) today at a presentation to Chen Guangcheng of the 2012 Lantos Human Rights Prize from the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice.

    Chen, the blind Chinese human rights lawyer who caught the attention of the world in May-June 2012 in his daring bid to escape house arrest in China by seeking help in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. He eventually won his and his immedaite family's freedom through international pressure on the Chinese government to release him. As Chairman of the U.S. China Commission, Smith (NJ-04) had worked on Chen’s behalf for years, including several congressional hearings focused on Chen's plight.

    "Not only have the Chens endured numbing isolation and unspeakable torture over the course of several years, but now as we all know, in a pathetic display of PRC governmental revenge Chen’s nephew Chen Kegui languishes in a Chinese prison while other family members remain at risk," Smith said in his address at the ceremony. "Undeterred, Mr. Chen continues to gently raise his clear and consistent voice on behalf of victims while pushing systemic reform of egregiously flawed political institutions and the people who persecute and repress."

    "Blind since childhood, Mr. Chen bore all the burdens and disadvantages that a disabled person faces in rural China. Confronted with the denial of his rights, he developed an intense interest in law and challenged the local government, winning his case. Hearing of Mr. Chen’s success, other individuals in Shandong Province were inspired to seek his legal assistance in securing redress and vindication.

    "Almost everywhere, corrupt officials made—and continue to make—life miserable for those struggling to survive.  Mr. Chen informed many of their rights and helped them seek durable remedies. He helped many to see that the rule of just and compassionate law wasn’t just for the privileged few, but for everyone.

    "Victimized yet unbroken by beatings and torture—51 months of nightmarish incarceration, preceded by house arrest and followed by 18 months more cut short only by his escape— Chen Guangcheng tenaciously defended Chinese women and babies oppressed by China’s draconian one child policy.

    "Mr. Chen’s brilliant mind, indomitable spirit and unimaginable courage exposed pervasive forced abortion—deemed a crime against humanity at the Nuremberg Nazi War Crimes Tribunal—and was relentless in using his self-taught legal skills to protect the innocent.

    "Unfazed by both the difficulty of the task or the inherent risks, Mr. Chen employed legal strategies to combat this insidious government cruelty towards women and children and argued that his clients in Linyi—and all women in China for that matter—have rights that prohibit such violence. That they deserve better.

    "Chen became—and remains—their hero.

    "Mr. Chen’s daring escape to the U.S. Embassy, his miraculous evasion of China’s ubiquitous secret police en route is the stuff of legend and superheroes.

    "It took a blind man to really see the injustice of a population control program that makes most brothers and sisters illegal and to hear the desperate cries of Chinese women.

    "It took a blind man, the great Chen Guangcheng, to open the eyes of a blind world to these human rights violations systematically inflicted on Chinese women.

    "No one anywhere in the world is more deserving of the 2012 Lantos Human Rights Prize.

    "No one."

    Chen’s entrance into the U.S. Embassy in late April 2012 caused a diplomatic fervor as it came in the prelude to a major U.S. State Department visit to China headed by Secretary Hillary Clinton. The State Department and Chinese government mutally agreed to removed Chen from the Embassy and to take him to a state hospital. However, Smith likened Chen’s heavily guarded confinement at a Beijing government hospital to house arrest. From the hospital, a “shaken” Chen told an Associated Press reporter he was appealing to Congressman Smith to help his family. After weeks of pressure, he and his wife and two children arrived at Newark International Airport in New Jersey and settled in at New York University campus in June.

    In an unplanned live call-in to a May 3rd hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China chaired by Smith, Chen testified by phone (Click here to view the CSPAN video) from his hospital bed in China about his concerns of his and his family’s safety. Within hours, the Chinese government announced that Chen could apply to travel to the United States. Chen also called into a May 15 2012 hearing Smith chaired when Chen's case seemed to be lagging at the hands of the Chinese government.

    The Congressional-Executive Commission on the People’s Republic of China is a congressionally-mandated, bipartisan panel made up of Members of the House and Senate and Presidential appointees serving in the Obama Administration. Chairman Smith held three hearings on Chen, including an emergency hearing in November 2011 to determine Chen’s then-unknown status. Smith also wrote a House Amendment on Chen’s plight in July 2011 that passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and nominated Chen for the Nobel Peace Prize in February 2010.