The brother, Chen Guangfu, said he came to Beijing to advocate on behalf of his son, who has been in police custody since attacking a group of plainclothes officers who broke into the family home in their search for Chen Guangcheng. He also said the family’s village in the northeastern province of Shandong has been subjected to the same severe restrictions that drove his brother to evade illegal house arrest on his way to eventual exile in the United States.  Mr. Chen, 55, a farmer and itinerant laborer, said he slipped out of the village on Tuesday around 3 a.m. while his minders slept.  “Legally Chen Guangfu is a free man, but in reality guards had been preventing him from leaving his village,” said Ding Xikui, the lawyer who met with him.  In addition to infuriating local officials, Mr. Chen’s arrival in Beijing is likely to draw renewed attention to the plight of those who were left behind last weekend when Chen Guangcheng, his wife and two children boarded a commercial flight for the United States. Their departure ended the three-week diplomatic impasse that had threatened to sour relations between the two governments.  Chen Guangcheng, 40, a blind and self-trained “barefoot lawyer” whose legal fight against coercive family-planning policies earned him the enmity of local officials, is attending New York University Law School on a fellowship.  In remarks he made shortly before leaving China on Saturday, Mr. Chen said he was worried that his relatives, and the half-dozen activists who helped him evade security agents in Beijing, would be punished after his departure.  Except for a brief news conference last Sunday upon his arrival in New York, Mr. Chen has remained out of public view. Friends say he and his wife are looking for schools for their children, but also trying to decide what to say to the news media — and whether their comments might hurt or help supporters back home.  In the unwritten deal that paved the way for Mr. Chen to leave the embassy, Chinese officials said they would investigate the local Shandong officials who orchestrated his 19 months of house arrest — and the retributive beatings periodically administered to him and his wife.  It is unclear whether such an investigation has begun.  “There is still some hope but if nothing is done, it shows that these were just empty promises,” said Wang Songlian, a researcher at Chinese Human Rights Defenders.  If the activists instrumental in Mr. Chen’s escape have so far avoided official prosecution, they are not exactly free. Most are under some form of residential surveillance, including He Peirong, the former English teacher from Nanjing who drove him from Shandong to Beijing, and Guo Yushan, a scholar and activist who helped move him from place to place around the capital until he was able to enter the American Embassy.  Others, like Teng Biao, a lawyer who helped persuade Mr. Chen to leave China, have been forced to leave Beijing, at least temporarily.  So far it appears that Mr. Chen’s relatives in rural Shandong have suffered the most. Chen Guangfu, the older brother who arrived in Beijing on Wednesday, says he was whipped and stomped on by angry interrogators who wanted to know how a blind man could have evaded dozens of guards and scaled several high walls. The abuse, he said, lasted 48 hours.  But it is Chen Guangfu’s son, Chen Kegui, 32, who stands to lose the most. He is being held at a detention center in Yinan County and faces attempted homicide charges. According to lawyers the family asked to defend him, Chen Kegui slashed several officers who broke down the door of his family’s home shortly before midnight on April 27. The men, he claims, did not identify themselves as police officials and were beating his mother.  Chen Kegui went into hiding but was later apprehended.  The authorities have rebuffed the dozen or so lawyers who stepped forward to represent Chen Kegui. One says he had his license revoked, and several others claim travel bans or threats have prevented them from traveling to Shandong.  The two lawyers left standing, Mr. Ding and Si Weijiang, prominent legal defenders from Shanghai, say officials in Yinan County refused to allow them to meet with Mr. Chen after they traveled there last week. The local Public Security Bureau, they said, told them their would-be client had already chosen to accept a public defender.  Mr. Ding rejected that contention, saying Chen Kegui had told his wife to hire lawyers, and that it was unlikely he would have accepted a local government-appointed lawyer. They have appealed the decision in a letter they sent to the authorities earlier this week but have yet to hear back.  “Our greatest fear is that in the meantime he will be tortured and forced to give a confession,” Mr. Ding said.  Mia Li and Zhang Wei contributed research.
Chen Guangfu, a brother of Chen Guangcheng, slipped through a security cordon and went to Beijing, said a lawyer who met him there.