Info Aggregator: Dark Glasses Portrait Campaign to Save Chen Guangcheng

Wednesday, 26 October 2011

Dark Glasses Portrait Campaign to Save Chen Guangcheng

Appeal letter from Sarcastic-O

Those of you who are living outside of China but would like to contribute to the rescue of the blind activist Chen Guangcheng can consider joining this very innovative campaign called 墨镜 . 肖像 Dark Glasses . Portrait.

This campaign is started by a China-based artist and cartoonist who blogs under the alias 蟹农场 or “hexiefarm”. It calls for supporters of Chen Guangcheng to submit photographs of themselves wearing dark glasses (or blindfolds) as a way of showing their solidarity for the blind activist. The images are then posted online, in the form of a photo blog dedicated to drawing public attention to Chen Guangcheng’s ordeal.

I am now re-posting an appeal letter written by a netizen named “Sarcastic-O”. This letter gives a very good introduction to the campaign.

Dear Readers,

Please take a bit of your time to look and participate in this current campaign.

Chen GuangCheng is a blind lawyer in China. He is also a civil rights activist and helped in drawing international attention to human rights issues in rural areas of China. After talking to Time magazine about the forced abortion cases in Shandong Province, the authorities arrested him under the accusation of destruction of property and assembling a crowd to disrupt traffic (which is a frame in order to get an innocent man into jail). He was sentenced to four years and three months in prison.

After he was released, Chen GuangCheng was put under House Arrest by the government for no reason. Chen and his wife, along with their six year old daughter, are forbidden to leave their house. Security guards make sure that no one can come and visit the family. Many attempts of supporters have been made to visit Chen and his family, however they were turned away by force, threatened, robbed, and in some cases beaten severely.

Chen’s ten year old son is forced to live with relatives in order to continue schooling. He is only allowed to see his family once a year, on New Year’s Eve. Chen’s six year old daughter who was supposed to start First Grade was rejected from the school. Even though she is now able to attend school, four to five ‘bodyguards’ place her under strict supervision by following her to all her classes. The girl is not allowed to play with others, she is not allowed to come into contact with others, toys and books sent to her from friends were all taken away.

The family remains under house arrest to this day.

All this was done, because a blind lawyer spoke out against the interests of the Chinese Government. The government has no reason to place the Chen family under house arrest. They have no right to cut a six year old girl away from society. Nor should they separate a ten year old boy from his family.

This campaign is called Dark Glasses. Portrait. It was started in order to support the family. Put on a pair of dark glasses (sunglasses/blindfold), ask a friend to take a portrait of you, write a few words about your thoughts (can be in English!), and send the picture to ichenguangcheng@gmail.com. The pictures are gathered at http://ichenguangcheng.blogspot.com/.

Visit here for original campaign: http://ichenguangcheng.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-post.html

The campaign has also been featured on China Real Time Report (http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/10/20/social-media-helps-china-activists-score-victory-for-blind-lawyer/) and Artists Speak Out! (http://artistsspeakout.com/2011/10/ai-weiwei-others-speak-out-for-blind-chinese-activist-chen-guangcheng/)

Please help in spreading the word. I as an individual may not be able to do much, but the least I can let more people know about this. I as an individual may not be heard, but at least I can motivate other people to speak out with me.

Thank you very much for your time, I appreciate it if you would participate.

In prayers for a better day.

Sarcastic-O