http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/china/130521/uk-westminster-award-chen-guangcheng
The UK's decision to give Chen a Westminster Award is likely to make
Chen's activism a diplomatic issue between the UK and China.
Global Post
May 21, 2013
Will China punish UK for giving award to Chen Guangcheng?
By Benjamin Carlson
HONG KONG — A little more than one year after he bravely escaped
illegal house arrest in China for the United States, blind activist
lawyer Chen Guangcheng has become a much bigger thorn in the side of
his native country's Communist Party regime.
"I think they're in a state of madness," he said last week in an
interview last week with Buzzfeed in Oslo, Norway.
Chen, who initially said he wished to return to China as soon as
possible, has become one of the Chinese government's most outspoken
critics, calling for America and the EU to pressure China to adhere to
its own laws and uphold human rights.
Now, the British Parliament's decision this week to give Chen a
Westminster Award in recognition of his fight for "human rights, human
life and human dignity" is likely to make Chen's activism a diplomatic
issue between the UK and China.
Relations were already rocky between the two powers after Prime
Minister David Cameron had to cancel an April trip to China because
top officials refused to meet with him. Beijing was presumably angry
with Cameron for meeting with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan
leader whom China has branded a "wolf in sheep's clothing," last year.
Chen Guangcheng's visit to the UK has included a blitz of media
appearances with the BBC, London Telegraph, and Channel 4. In a
Guardian op-ed co-written with Edward McMillan-Scott, Chen criticized
Western governments that have "stood by" as authoritarian regimes like
China's "engage in systematic repression with impunity."
These were relatively gentle words compared to his remarks in Oslo
last month, when Chen called Communism a "scam" and called on the
international community to deny visas to top-level officials
associated with human rights abuses.