Lo que el mundo debe saber sobre China, su interés en
convertirse en la primera potencia económica es, para los que defienden los
derechos humanos, una afrenta a la democracia.
Christian Bale el actor que caracterizó a Batman vivió en
carne propia la represión y la falta de derechos en China, con la suerte que
una cámara de video pudo filmar lo que pasó. No es necesario añadir mucho la información es vasta.
¿Hasta cuando la comunidad internacional permitirá que los
países totalitarios con gobiernos comunistas como China y Cuba se salgan con la
suya? ¿Hasta cuando seguiremos fomentado el capitalismo sin control en China?
Juzgue usted
By msnbc.com staff and news services
BEIJING -- "Batman" star Christian Bale was
roughed up by security guards who stopped him visiting a blind activist
living under house arrest in China.
Video footage of the scuffle was shot by a camera
crew traveling with the Hollywood actor as he promoted a film he has made
in the country.
CNN posted scenes of the confrontation between Bale and the guards on its website
Friday.
The run-in and publicity is likely to cause discomfort in
China's government-backed film industry, which hopes Bale's movie "The
Flowers of War" will be a creative success at home and abroad.
The star's actions are sure to focus attention on the plight
of Chen Guangcheng, guarded around the clock by plain-clothed and uniformed
workers who have blocked dozens of reporters and fellow activists trying to see
him in the past.
Bale was to leave China on Friday and his representatives
could not immediately be reached for comment.
Oscar-winning actor Christian Bale and his wife Sibi are
escorted by security guards as they arrive for the premiere of the
"Flowers of War" in Beijing on Dec. 12.
Bale, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for last year's
"The Fighter," traveled Thursday with a crew from CNN to the village
in eastern China where Chen, the blind lawyer, lives with his family in
complete isolation.
They were stopped at the entrance to Dongshigu village in
Shandong province by unidentified men.
'An inspiration'
The video footage shows Bale asking to see
Chen, with a CNN producer providing interpretation, but being ordered by one of
the guards to leave. He then asked why he was unable to pass through. The
guards responded by trying to grab or punch a small video camera Bale was
carrying.
"What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake
his hand and say what an inspiration he is," Bale was quoted as saying by
CNN.
Chen's case has been raised publicly by U.S. lawmakers and
diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, all to no
response from China.
CNN said Bale first learned of Chen from news reports when
he was in China filming "The Flowers of War," China's official
submission this year for best foreign language film Oscar.
"Chen Guangcheng is a newsworthy figure ... and as such
it is in the interest of CNN's global viewers to hear from him," CNN said
in a statement. "Mr. Bale reached out to CNN and invited us to join him on
his journey to visit Chen."
Chen, a self-taught lawyer who was blinded by a fever in
infancy, angered authorities after documenting forced late-term abortions and
sterilizations and other abuses by overzealous authorities trying to meet
population control goals in his rural community. He was imprisoned for
allegedly instigating an attack on government offices and organizing a group of
people to disrupt traffic, charges his supporters say were fabricated.
Although now officially free under the law, he has been
confined to his home in the village eight hours' drive from Beijing and
subjected to periodic beatings and other abuse, activists say.
While Bale's visit focuses new attention on Chen's case,
CNN's role raises questions about activism and advocacy among reporters, said
David Bandurski, editor of the China Media Project website at the University of
Hong Kong.
"It made me instantly uncomfortable, wondering how it
all came together. It raises questions about where the lines are drawn,"
Bandurski said.
Politically sensitive subject
The incident also drew strong
interest — most of it highly positive — on social networking sites such as
Twitter and its Chinese equivalent, Weibo.
Having their star's name pinging across the Internet in
connection with such a politically sensitive subject puts promoters of
"The Flowers of War" in a bind. The film opens in China on Friday and
next week in the United States.
Directed by the renowned Zhang Yimou, it is also the most
expensive Chinese movie ever made, at $94 million, some of which came from the
state-owned Bank of China.
The movie centers on the 1937 sacking of the eastern city of
Nanjing, a central event in China's pre-revolutionary "century of
humiliation" and has been described by some critics as hewing to official
propaganda portraying Chinese as heroic victims and Japanese as one-dimensional
cartoon villains.
While China has the world's third-largest film industry —
both in box office and output — it has made relatively little global impact.
Story lines are often heavily influenced by the ruling Communist Party, whose
culture commissars must approve scripts and have final say over whether a film
gets released.
El caso de Chen Guangcheng en Amnistía Internacional
An ad hoc legal adviser and his family are facing the very
real prospect of starving to death in their own home in the Shandong province
in China.
Since his release from prison on 9 September Chen Guangcheng
and his family have been under house arrest imposed by village leaders in
Dongshigu village, Shandong province. Chen Guangcheng is in urgent need of
medical attention and he and his family are running out of food, but the
authorities have refused to let them leave their home.
No se puede auspiciar a países que no respetan los derechos humanos. Es muy difícil cuando países como Estados Unidos tienen un doble discurso, pero si los ciudadanos internacionales obligan a los gobiernos otra sería la historia, esto fue lo que debió haber cubierto la revista TIME.
Such is Life!
