China: Full drama of blind activist Chen Guangcheng’s escape told

The woman who drove blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng to Beijing after his dramatic escape from house arrest in eastern China has told how she sat down with security officers afterwards to watch the prison escape film The Shawshank Redemption.

He Peirong said that five days after picking up Mr Chen, she was taken from her home in Nanjing by state security officers “to assist with investigations”. The officers interrogated her about whether she helped plan Mr Chen’s escape.

“They asked me every day: How did you move him out? Was there any advance planning? How did you plan it? What were your roles?” Ms He said, adding that the officers had been very polite.

In an odd twist, Ms He said, The Shawshank Redemption was showing on TV in the hotel room where three security officers questioned her and Guo Yushan, a rights activist. “After we finished watching the movie, I told the officers: I want to tell you a story that is more exciting than this movie,” she said.

Ms He said she had received a surprise e-mail from a source which read: “The bird has left the cage. What do we do?”

“I understand. I’m in Beijing,” Ms He replied. By midnight the next day she and Mr Guo had driven for six hours to Linyi, a city in Shandong.

There was no predetermined pick-up point in Shandong, according to Ms He, and when she and several others arrived, they searched for him for two hours.

Ms He, 40, also known as “Pearl”, had campaigned for Mr Chen’s release on Twitter nearly every day for more than a year, since she first learned that he was confined to his home after being released from jail in 2010.

When she picked Mr Chen up after midnight, it was the first time she had met him. By that time, the activist had scaled walls and made his way through farmland without water or food for 17 hours.