God's Double Agent (41 page)

It wasn’t even a question in our minds. We knew the tactics of the Chinese government more than anyone; all of us had already either been imprisoned or under constant surveillance. We decided long ago that we would not bend our knee to China. “Of course,” we all said. “We’re already here.”

When President Bush heard our response, he immediately sent for us. I was so humbled by the opportunities God had given me as we walked through the hallowed halls of the White House. Born in such humble beginnings, I was teasingly called “Prime Minister Fu” by my classmates who believed I could only rise so far into the social strata. Yet, here I was, about to meet the leader of the free world.

“Wait right here,” a woman said, putting her hand gently on my shoulder. I was quite sure we were only a few steps away from the Oval Office, and my heart was racing. I’d read so much about this very place, even when I was a child in my peasant village, and here I stood.

“I’m sorry,” she said to me, very quietly. “You won’t be allowed in.” Evidently, part of the last-minute negotiations included two concessions. First, the meeting would not take place in the Oval Office, but in a room called the “Yellow Oval,” located in the president’s personal residence. Second, one member of our group would not be allowed to meet with the president in the White House: troublemaker and whistleblower Bob Fu.

I was incredibly disappointed, but stepped aside as my friends went in to meet with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the National Security Advisor, Gerson, and other staff. After all, I hadn’t done any of this to elevate myself, and it was clear that the Chinese government still had me in their crosshairs. After the meeting, my friends gave me a complete rundown of all that happened. They said President Bush had welcomed them by saying, “I’ve been told you all love freedom as house church movement members.” After they told him about their struggles, they shared a very poignant moment. Gerson describes the scene from his perspective best:

Near the end of the meeting, the president was told the dissidents wanted to pray with him. Everyone stood, and the president asked people to join hands—the vice president looking momentarily stricken with awkwardness. (Clearly, where Vice President Cheney comes from, prayerful hand holding isn’t so common.) After a short prayer for mercy, blessing, and protection, the president asked the dissidents to join him in a picture. As they were leaving, the president told them: “Now I’ve seen your faces and know your names. From now on, whenever I talk about human rights in China, I’ll be thinking about you.”
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Afterward, the White House took precautions to protect these dissidents. According to a senior Bush official, the president sent a back channel message to the Chinese government: “I,
President Bush, am personally invested in the welfare of these three dissidents, and if anything happens to them, then this would cause a severe disruption in US-China relations.” When they arrived home at the Beijing airport, American diplomats met them and kept in close contact with them. In fact, a Chinese agent later approached Dr. Li Baiguang and said, “Now that you are called a friend by the President of the United States, we won’t hurt you physically anymore. But you still need to be careful as a Chinese citizen.”

Though the meeting went wonderfully, Guo was still angry at them for his mistreatment. Eight days after the event, he published the letter he’d written protesting his exclusion on a Chinese website. Understandably, it caused quite an uproar in the Chinese human rights activist community. Right after his statement went public, I issued an apology, but nothing could undo the damage I’d inflicted on this man. After all, my decision meant Guo didn’t experience the elevated status of having “friends in high places.”

Within just a few months of being disinvited from the Bush event, he was arrested.

In God’s good timing, I did eventually get to meet the president. On July 29, 2008, just before noon, I met with President Bush and four other human rights leaders to discuss human rights in advance of the 2008 Olympic Games. They were beginning in Beijing the following week, and the president’s meeting sent a very strong message to China about American priorities. In our visit, he said he wanted to talk to President Hu Jintao about human rights violations, to explain that Christians in his country are peace-loving and caring people, and to urge China not to be afraid of us. He also planned on speaking with the Chinese people about the importance of religious liberty. I gave him some gray wristbands with “Pray for China” printed
in black letters in both English and Chinese, which ChinaAid had made in conjunction with the Voice of the Martyrs. The bracelets were made to remind people that Chinese believers were still being punished for their faith through beatings, imprisonment, and even death—even as the eyes of the world were fixed on the super-fast athletes, the new Olympic arena, and all the expensive advertisements.

It was touching that President Bush cared so much about religious freedom, a passion he demonstrated all the way to the last hours of his term. During roughly the same time frame, the two attorneys with remarkably similar names, Gao and Guo, were persecuted, and their families were forced to escape China and seek asylum in the United States.

Guo Feixiong worked with Gao Zhishen, who was one of the most successful Chinese human rights lawyers. He was part of the legal defense team for a house church network in Beijing and had advocated for the freedom of nonChristian religious sects, including the much maligned and persecuted Falun Gong, and had helped in Pastor Cai’s defense. Because of his activities, Gao’s law license had been revoked and his firm shut down. When he continued to give legal advice to the persecuted, agents began living in their home, leaving the lights on at all times for sleep deprivation, and even starving their young son to extract information out of the parents. Agents followed their daughter to school, where they beat her in front of her classmates.

Through ChinaAid’s encouragement, Congress passed a resolution demanding the Chinese government stop harassing Gao’s family. Gao was arrested, interrogated, tortured mentally, stripped naked, and shocked with electric batons on his private parts before he was released. After his release—knowing his time of freedom would be short—he hatched a plan to enable his family to cross the mountainous border, with the help of
many believers in the underground railroad for the religiously persecuted.

About that time, Guo Feixiong was also arrested in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou and was falsely charged with “running an illegal business,” a retaliation against him for his work in publicizing the arrest of his co-worker Gao to the outside world.

One morning, I learned through a friend with Radio Free Asia that Gao’s family had arrived in Bangkok. I got assurance from the White House and the State Department, then bought a ticket to Bangkok that afternoon. It was the most expensive ticket I’d ever purchased, but time was of the essence. When I arrived, I went to the small home where Gao’s family was hiding out; a Falun Gong family had offered shelter to Gao’s family because of his advocacy for religious freedom. The tiny house was a one-bedroom with no mattresses, and everyone slept on the floor. I spent the Chinese New Year with the Gao family there.

Through our underground church efforts, Guo’s son had also been rescued, and he arrived in Bangkok as well. While I was in Thailand, I met with the little boy and arranged for him to stay with the Gao family.

Because these were such high-profile cases, the Chinese government was probably already in hot pursuit. Consequently, I moved the family from the Falun Gong home to a hotel, then to another hotel. We made sure they were Western hotel chains to avoid being compromised. Finally, I rented an apartment in an international community full of Westerners. None of us had very much sleep, and they were frazzled at having to relocate every few days.

One day, my phone rang. It was Gao!

He was attending a relative’s wedding in the Shanxi province, which was his hometown, and could tell he was being followed. He borrowed a phone, went to a toilet room, and called his
family from the stall. It was the last conversation they would have with him before he disappeared.

“I want to see you guys in heaven,” he said.

I had brought the Jesus movie with me and showed it to his family. The children were young and full of pure faith. As they watched the movie and saw Jesus crucified and resurrected, tears ran down their faces and they believed. After the movie, the little boy came to me and placed some Thai coins in my hands.

“This is for Jesus,” he said. Even though he’d only been a Christian for a few minutes, he already made an offering to his Lord.

Gao’s wife, however, was not so sure about Christianity. “My kids can believe in Jesus,” she told me, “but the Falun Gong has helped me so much. I can believe in that religion.”

But during her last conversation with Gao, he had said, “I don’t want to be forever separated from you. If the Communists take me from you now, I at least want to be reunited with you after my death.”

It was a heartwrenching conversation. At the end of it, Gao spoke to me. “I entrust my family to you,” he said.

“Don’t you want us to rescue you too?” I asked. I could tell that he was torn. However, he felt his calling was to stay in China and continue the fight for religious freedom. On January 16, 2009, I called the White House and the State Department to try to get his family out of the country. “We need to get Gao’s family political asylum in the United States.”

“Don’t you realize that today is the last working day before Barack Obama’s inauguration?” the person said. “We’re in the middle of a transition of power.”

“Can’t you help them anyway?”

The person on the other end of the phone paused.

“All right,” he said. “But if you’d called just a few hours later, all of our computers would’ve been shut down and we’d no longer have access to them.”

Once again, the religious dissidents got the full cooperation of the White House, which set the process in motion and accepted his family directly as refugees without going through the UN. They were processed as political refugees in the most urgent manner because of the potential threat and danger they could face in Thailand.

This allowed their immigration paperwork to be completed in eleven days. In the realm of government bureaucracy, this was a total miracle.

However, even though they had the go-ahead from the American government, Thailand refused to give the Gao family exit privileges because they didn’t have passports. With the Chinese government hot on our trail, I had to fly back to Washington, DC, to pressure the Thai government to issue exit permits for Gao’s family. While I was there, I also tried to persuade the State Department to process the Guo family in the same urgent way the Gao family was processed. However, the White House had already transitioned over to the new administration, and things became much more difficult for China’s persecuted.

After I left Bangkok, Guo’s wife and daughter were also rescued and made it to Thailand. The State Department, however, refused to accept the Guo family directly. Instead, they insisted that they go through the UN, an entity under such influence of the Chinese government. While I was in Texas, I prepared their application and emailed it to them. Then they went to the UN to file their application. It didn’t work, just as we’d predicted. The UN denied their application for refugee protection, and even urged them to go back to China.

I learned of this when I was traveling with my family back from Oklahoma, where we’d been visiting friends. We were heading down the interstate, listening to music and chatting while the kids dozed in the back. Heidi and I had been talking about errands that needed to be run. Specifically, she was reminding me that when we got back to Texas, I needed to apply
for visas for her and the children because they wanted to make a trip to Hong Kong.

“I put everyone’s passports in your suitcase,” she said, gently nudging me, “in case you want to take care of that when we get back to Texas.”