As Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese legal activist who escaped from seven years of persecution, prepares for a new life after his arrival in the US, friends and relatives he left behind are bracing for fresh abuse.
“I would have preferred Chen Guangcheng to stay a little longer,” said Liu Weiguo, a lawyer in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province where Mr Chen comes from. “Now that he has left, retribution against those close to him will no longer attract any attention. There will be a big reckoning eventually.”
Mr Chen, his wife Yuan Weijing and their two children arrived at Newark-Liberty International Airport on Saturday night, ending a month-long odyssey from house arrest in his heavily-guarded home village to the US embassy in Beijing and from there to a Beijing hospital that tested relations between the world’s two leading powers.