Chinese human rights activist Guo Feixiong (real name Yang Maodong) and his sister Yang Maoping arrived in Shanghai from Guangzhou around 6 p.m. on January 28, but were intercepted by authorities at Pudong Airport while preparing to transfer to an international flight to San Francisco on suspicion of “endangering national security” and were unable to leave the country. Guo Feixiong announced an indefinite hunger strike on the spot.
A Voice of America reporter spoke with Guo earlier by phone as they were traveling to Pudong Airport. Listen to the audio interview.
Guo Feixiong told VOA near the customs checkpoint at Pudong Airport how inhumane this Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Security, Ministry of Customs, and the Immigration Control Law is.
Because his trip to the U.S. to care for his wife after cancer removal surgery was blocked by China’s Ministry of Public Security, he recently sent an urgent open letter to Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang and Li Zhanshu, the top brass of the Chinese Communist Party, calling on the three leaders to act in a spirit of humanitarian civility and immediately stop the underhanded attempts by Ministry of Public Security officials to illegally block his trip to the U.S.
The development is being widely watched as Guo Feixiong’s wife is in urgent need of Family care following surgery.
Guo Feixiong, whose real name is Yang Maodong, is 54 years old and is considered a civil scholar who believes in democracy and freedom and is a moderate and rational advocate of civil rights. He has always campaigned for public affairs and political issues regardless of his personal safety and has been imprisoned four times by the authorities for his human rights activism, his solidarity in defense of Falun Gong, and his demand for disclosure of the property of Chinese Communist Party officials, and has spent 11 of the past 15 years in prison, and is known as “Hero of Civil Rights.”
In an interview with the Voice of America on August 7, 2019, after his release from prison, Guo Feixiong urged Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping to carry out political reforms and called for deeper cooperation between the U.S. and China.
Currently, in Washington, the Biden administration has taken office. U.S.-China relations are at a delicate and important moment in history.
Zhou Fenglock, a longtime observer of the U.S. political situation and international situation, analyzed that the new U.S. Secretary of State Blinken recently expressed his basic agreement with the previous administration’s hard-line China Policy during a congressional hearing, and that the U.S. and Chinese militaries are still confronting each other in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea recently, indicating that the U.S. may basically continue the Trump administration’s China policy in the next four years.
As a result, the head of a public interest group concerned about the human rights situation in mainland China called on the U.S. government to pay attention to the humanitarian situation facing Guo Feixiong, who may not be able to travel to the U.S. to care for his seriously ill wife, and to guard against attempts by the Chinese Communist authorities to use the family ties of human rights activists and dissidents to try to engage in “hostage diplomacy.
It is worth noting that whether human rights activist Guo Feixiong, who has a visa to travel to the United States, will be able to escape the inhumane obstacles imposed by the Chinese authorities and reach the United States to reunite with his seriously ill wife and children, ultimately turning a crisis into an opportunity, will not only test the political wisdom of China’s leaders, but could also be the first Chinese human rights and humanitarian incident to confront the new U.S. government.
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