Gimme Shelter
So, how do you take
refuge in an embassy, anyway?
BY URI FRIEDMAN AND
JOSHUA KEATING | APRIL 30, 2012
The whereabouts of
Chinese human rights lawyer Chen
Guangcheng is currently the subject of intense speculation. Some believe that the
prominent blind dissident, who escaped from 19 months of house arrest last week, has
taken refuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing, while others say he may be hiding
out in the residence of U.S. ambassador Gary Locke or another American
diplomat. The New York Times even quoted one
anonymous diplomat in China as suggesting that Chen might have queued up in a
long line at the U.S. embassy's visa section and then sought asylum once inside
the compound (it's difficult to imagine Chen, with his iconic dark glasses,
blending in with the crowd). Now, on the eve of Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton's trip to Beijing, U.S. and Chinese officials are reportedly engaged in tense
negotiations over Chen's fate.
If the reports are
true, Chen's gambit is hardly unprecedented. Broadly speaking, of course, the
idea of seeking refuge can be traced all the way back to the biblical
notion of special cities for those who killed people
accidentally. In the Middle Ages -- beginning as early as the 4th century A.D. -- the Catholic Church
began butting heads with civil authorities over the practice of offering
criminals various forms of sanctuary in and around churches (the monarchs
eventually proved victorious, as church sanctuaries became, in the words of scholar Hilary Cunningham,
"holding pens for criminals pursued by the royal courts" before
vanishing altogether). These practices, however, generally applied to those
suspected of committing crimes -- not political refugees.
The act of seeking
sanctuary in foreign embassies gained traction in the 20th century, but fleeing
to a diplomatic mission wasn't always a safe bet. In 1927, for example,
the anti-Communist Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin ordered a raid on the Soviet embassy in
Beijing, arresting and executing 20 Communist activists who had sought refuge
there including Li Dazhao, co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party.
But, for the most
part, the recognition of embassies as off-limits to the host-country
authorities gradually became a fundamental principal of customary international
law over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, though the seeds were
planted earlier (a Venetian statute in 1554 declared that "he who has taken
refuge in the house of a diplomat shall not be followed there, and his pursuers
are to feign ignorance of his presence").
In 1956, for instance,
when the Soviet Union sent troops into Hungary to reassert control over the
country, reformist Communist leader Imre Nagy took
refuge at the embassy of non-aligned Yugoslavia. Yuri Andropov,
the Soviet ambassador to Hungary and future Communist Party general secretary,
promised Nagy safe passage out of
the country but then arrested him as soon as he left the
compound. He was executed after a secret trial the next year.
Another leader of the
Hungarian uprising, Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty, took refuge at the U.S. embassy
after the Soviet invasion and ended up spending
the next 15 years inside the embassy compound, with local
police keeping a 24-hour watch to prevent him from escaping. He was eventually
permitted to leave Hungary in 1971.
In 1961, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations codified
prevailing customary law by declaring the "premises" of diplomatic
missions "inviolable" -- effectively barring security agents in a
host country from entering embassy grounds without the embassy's permission.
The treaty added that "premises" included the head of the diplomatic
mission's residence and that the private residences of diplomats also enjoyed
"inviolability," though it's unclear whether this clause applies to all diplomats.
The New York Times points out that if Chen
is indeed holed up in an American diplomat's apartment, it "could leave
him open to an attempt by security forces to seize him," according to
unnamed diplomats interviewed by the paper.
This inviolability
explains why embassies are our modern-day sovereign sanctuaries. But,
importantly, the Vienna Convention says nothing about a diplomatic mission
granting asylum to a person fleeing authorities in the host country -- what the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and others have called "diplomatic
asylum" (Latin America, for its part, has enshrined the concept of
"diplomatic asylum" in regional
treaties.) Asylum seekers typically leave their country before
applying for help either in the country where they want to resettle or in a
third country.
What this means in
practice is that once someone seeks refuge in an embassy, the foreign
government often enters into negotiations with the host government about the
fugitive's fate. In February, when the Chinese official Wang Lijun turned up at the American consulate in
Chengdu seeking asylum and accusing Chinese leader Bo Xilai of corruption, he
was eventually transferred to Chinese custody and has not been heard from since. This time
around, it's unclear whether Chen Guangcheng, if
he is indeed with American diplomats, is seeking asylum in the United States or
simply a temporary safe haven from which to condemn his captors and pressure
Beijing to guarantee his safety. Neither goal is assured and, either way, the
episode will be a critical test for U.S.-Chinese relations.
During the Cold War,
embassy defections played a critical role in diplomacy. Some of the defectors
were spies such as KGB Maj. Vasili Mitrokhin, who walked into the U.S. embassy in Riga as
the Soviet Union was collapsing in 1992, bringing with him a treasure trove of
intelligence secrets. In 1953, when the leftist government of Guatemalan
President Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup, Ernesto
"Che" Guevara, who had ties to the regime, took refuge in the Argentine embassy
before securing passage to Mexico, where he would eventually meet up with Fidel
Castro.
On April 5, 1980, 750
Cubans gathered at the Peruvian embassy in Havana demanding political asylum. The next day, their
numbers had swelled to 10,000. Recognizing the scale of the political crisis,
the Castro regime authorized a boatlift of thousands of asylum seekers to the
United States and other Latin American countries. And 1989 saw what became
known as the "Prague Embassy Crisis," as hundreds of East Germans began jumping
the walls into the West German embassy in Prague, demanding
asylum. A tent city was set up in the embassy's courtyard to accommodate the
asylum seekers, and eventually more than 20,000 people are thought to have made
it to West Germany this way. Just 40 days after the West German government
granted the Prague refugees asylum, the Berlin Wall fell.
For the last 50 years,
foreign embassies in Beijing have been the most popular destination for North Korean
refugees seeking to flee to South Korea or the west. In one of the largest
defections, 25 asylum-seekers stormed their way into the Spanish embassy
in 2002.
While governments have
generally abided by the terms of the Vienna Convention, they have found ways to
bend the rules at times. When ousted Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega took refuge from U.S. troops at the
Vatican embassy in Managua in 1990, the Americans blasted rock music --
including Guns'n'Roses -- at the compound in an effort to force him out.
Perhaps sick of the racket themselves, Vatican officials eventually gave
Noriega his marching orders.
==
==
Chinese Human Rights Activist May Have Fled to U.S. Embassy, But He Won’t
Get Asylum
by Julian Ku, April
27th, 2012
China’s famous human
rights activist Chen Guangcheng (who even Christian Bale was beat up when he
tried to visit) has somehow managed to escape from his two-year house arrest*
and may have
made his way to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Chen has released a
powerful web video detailing the physical abuse he and his family have suffered
during his house arrest and demanding that the Chinese government act.
If Chen truly has made
it to the U.S. Embassy, he is hardly home free. If, for instance, he
seeks political asylum, he is
out of luck. I will let either Duncan or Peggy correct me on
this if I am wrong, but I believe as a matter of policy, the
U.S. does not consider asylum requests at their consulates and embassies.
As a matter of law, the U.S. does not view itself bound by
the Refugee Convention to do so.
Of course, Chen may
seek “sanctuary” but the U.S. has no obligation to give him such
sanctuary and will only do so in exceptional or extraordinary
circumstances. Nor
does China have any obligation to allow the U.S. to spirit him
out of the country. (I’ve been the U.S. Embassy in Beijing
several times and I am a little surprised that Chen could have gotten past the
Chinese guards who surround the place without the assistance of U.S.
embassy personnel).
I should add that
Chen’s public statements suggest he is NOT seeking asylum and he does not want
to leave China (his family is still in house arrest). But with Secretary
Clinton headed to Beijing for a few days, this will no doubt become an issue in
the already uncomfortable U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue. And perhaps
she can chat with Mr. Chen when she gets a snack at the Embassy kitchen. Mr.
Chen may be a houseguest for a while.
*originally, the post
read “six year” house arrest, but Mr. Chen was actually in prison for four
years prior to his two-year house arrest.
