The makings of a new Chinese dissident controversy seemed nearly in place Friday when Wuer Kaixi, a prominent exile, planned to defiantly enter the Chinese embassy here to draw attention to Beijing’s treatment of its critics.
Chinese embassy officials, however, refused to answer the door or the phone, sidestepping Mr. Wuer’s hope of forcing a confrontation that would lead to his arrest and extradition to China, where he could perhaps see his parents after 23 years.
The brief drama in a quiet neighborhood in the U.S. capital came two weeks after a showdown between U.S. and Chinese officials in Beijing over Chen Guangcheng, a blind, self-taught lawyer and activist who sought refuge at the American embassy there.
Mr. Wuer, a former student leader of the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square and longtime voice of the exile community, once labeled the Chinese leadership “fascists” and predicted their eventual downfall. Now, he is pressing the case of exiles, including “a huge number” of student activists forced to leave after the 1989 protests.
“I thought it would be for a year or two when I left China. Now, I have been living outside China longer than I lived there,” Mr. Wuer said.
“Exile itself is a shameful phenomenon for mankind, for a nation, for a country. Countries that exile people are not civilized, great nations. The exile lives an enormous mental and spiritual torture; exile is a phenomenon that needs to be eliminated if we are looking for civilization and social development,” he said.
He added: “I want to send a message to the world, to show how absurd the Chinese government is. The world has gotten used to Chinese absurdity, and now takes it for something that’s almost correct.”
Mr. Wuer said that he is banned from entering China and that his parents are not allowed to travel to see him, he said. “I want to see them, even if it means a prison visit,” he said by phone Friday morning.
Trailed by a few cameras, Mr. Wuer approached the embassy’s entrance just before 11 a.m. Friday and rang the buzzer. After he got no answer, he peered through the windows, then called the embassy on his cell phone, still getting no answer. He tried ringing the buzzer and calling repeatedly for about 10 minutes.
After trying one last time, rattling the glass doors by the guardhouse, Mr. Wuer said: “I guess that’s the answer—not just for me, but for all the questions raised about human rights in China.”
