Author: Yang Zhizhu
Translated by China Aid Association
On the morning of June 28, 2012, attorney Zhang Kai called me saying that Deng Jiyuan had arrived at Beijing early that morning. After lunch, I took a bus for over an hour to get to Zhang Kai’s residence.
As soon as Zhang Kai opened the door, I saw Deng Jiyuan and Xu Kai. Deng Jiyuan was still wearing the black clothes he wore on the day we left Zhenping, which was the 18th. He looked pale, but his eyes were still alert, but he didn’t seem tired. That turned out to be true because during our Bible study that night he stayed awake while Zhang Kai dozed off. Since I thought that Deng Jiyuan’s many days missing was because he was being held in secret by the government, as soon as I saw him I asked if he had come from the direction of Wuxi and Chongqing.
Deng Jiyuan said, “No, that route is closely guarded. The route through Ankang and Xi’an is tight too, with many checkpoints along the way. I first hid out at a friend’s home for a couple of days. [For fear of being tracked down and caught,] I even removed the SIM card and battery from my cell phone. I dared not fall asleep, not to mention go out to buy, change or wash clothes for fear of being discovered by them and captured. Then, at dusk on the 26th, I hired a taxi and headed towards Ankang. Every time we got close to a checkpoint, I would get out of the car, walk along the river bank, and get back in the car after the checkpoint. It took me seven or eight hours before we got to Guangfo township, Pingli county. I thought that once I got to Ankang and Xi’an, if I took a bus, the government would certainly have people there to stop me. So after resting for a few hours at Guangfo, I took a taxi and more than 10 hours later arrived at Shiyan, Hubei province. From there I boarded a Beijing-bound train and arrived in Beijing early this morning.”
I did the math. From dinner time on the 24th to the morning of the 28th, Deng Jiyuan was missing for five days, or for exactly 83 hours.
I also asked Deng Jiyuan how he shook off his “tails” on the 24th in Zhenping. He said, “On the 24th, I had dinner with a village official. Probably because our village official had promised the government to keep an eye on me, or because I had just gotten beat up two days earlier, or because I didn’t even have a change of clothes with me, anyhow, they probably assumed that I was unlikely to run away. So they only had one woman tailing me. But after dinner, on the way back to the hospital, the village official received a phone call from a county official and had to leave, and he told me to go back to the hospital on my own. So I asked the motorcycle-taxi driver to go faster, hoping to shake off the woman tailing me. Because our vehicle was not as good as hers, after going around in circles for a bit, we were unable to shake her. So I paid the fare and left the main road, heading down to the river bank and started running along the river bank. The woman could not catch up with me, so I quickly was able to shake her off.”
At about 3pm, Deng Jiyuan signed the papers prepared by attorney Zhang Kai authorizing me and Zhang Kai to file a criminal suit and apply for state compensation on behalf of the couple. News reporter Xu Kai from a business magazine, reporter Ren Zhongyuan from Caixin Net, and a British TV crew (which I invited) witnessed the signing of the authorization paper. Shortly after the British TV crew left, someone from a Hong Kong TV station showed up.
I reminded Deng Jiyuan, “Last time we visited you in Zhenping, you did not give us authorization to be your attorneys because you didn’t want to offend the government. Giving us your authorization now is actually more offensive to the government than the last time.”
“It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to offend the government last time, but rather because I mistakenly believed their promises. Now that they’ve broken their promises, and I got beaten up and called a ‘traitor,’ how can I trust them again?”
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