Enemies Of the State?

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By mid-August, Chen was under house arrest for his activities. Seven people, he and his wife say, were stationed outside his home to watch him. But Chen felt he had to escape to Beijing to continue with the lawsuit. On the evening of Aug. 25, while police snoozed outside, he sneaked out in the dark. Hearing someone follow him, Chen threw handfuls of gravel in different directions to confuse his pursuer. "The night gives me an advantage," says Chen. "I can navigate better than people with sight can." With a relative as a guide, Chen fled into fields of tall corn and walked for miles before meeting a friend who drove him to safety. But when Chen reached Beijing, four officials who had come from Linyi hassled him at the railway station. When he met again with TIME last week in Beijing, Chen's hands were shaking. Three hours after the interview, Linyi officials hustled him into a vehicle and took off. Chen is again under house arrest in Linyi.

Whistle-blowers in China often face retribution for publicizing official malfeasance. "I know I'm at risk, but I cannot give up, because people are depending on me," said Chen shortly before he was detained. Yet even if Chen is released from house arrest and his lawsuit succeeds, it will do little to change the fate of women like Hu Bingmei. When family-planning officials came to fetch her in May for a forced sterilization, Hu escaped with her two daughters to her parents' home in another village. Several days later, seven officials showed up, she says, grabbed her younger child and shoved the girl into a car. Afraid that her daughter would be abducted, Hu jumped into the vehicle with them. The car drove to the local family-planning clinic, where, Hu says, nurses threw her onto an operating table. "Other people were fine after their operations, but it hurt me so much, I could barely stand up," says Hu, 33. Two weeks later, doctors operated again and promised things would heal better. But even today, Hu doubles over in pain after just a few steps. "They told me they were doing this for my own good," says Hu. "But they have ruined my life."