News that Chinese democracy supporter Chen Guangcheng has sought asylum in the US Embassy in Beijing prompts me to link again to a piece I write for DIPLOMAT magazine about famed episodes of Embassies sheltering people fleeing from their own government.

Not forgetting the diplomacy of Wonder Woman:

This theme features in The Hiketeia, a graphic novel turning on the moral responsibilities of asylum. A mysterious young woman arrives at the Themiscyran embassy and seeks asylum under hiketeia, a ritual of the ancient Greeks involving mutual obligations of supplication and protection. Princess Diana (aka Wonder Woman) uneasily accepts, only to find herself dragged into a dark struggle of vengeance and justice – and a fierce battle with Batman.

These Embassy asylum issues can drag on. The world record is 15 YEARS:

The world record for someone staying inside an embassy – to the vexation of the host government – is 15 years, set by fiercely anti-communist Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty. In 1956 in Hungary he was freed from prison during the brief pro-democracy revolution, but when Soviet forces invaded the country a few days later, he sought sanctuary in the United States Embassy. There he stayed until 1971, when he was allowed to leave the country under Ostpolitik, never to return…

Even communist leaders have tried the Embassy escape route:

One excellent case was the peregrinating disgraced East German communist leader, Erich Honecker. Notorious for his unwavering confidence in Marxism even as it crashed around him in 1989 – ‘the Wall will be standing in 50 and even in 100 years, if the reasons for it are not yet removed’– he ended up in Moscow after East Germany collapsed in 1989, only to find the Soviet Union too collapsing. With the German authorities calling for him to return home to answer for communist crimes, he fled to the Embassy of Chile where he knew the Ambassador. After months of undignified tomfoolery, he was finally sent back to Germany by the Russian authorities to face trial, but then was allowed to travel to Chile to die as his health failed.

This one has the potential to turn into a vast diplomatic and political sensation, with unfathomable implications for US/China relations.

How can the Americans bundle him out of the door to face certain abuse? Smuggling him out of the country in a diplomatic bag would be a grave abuse of international law and cause more trouble than it solves. And why should the Chinese leadership even consider making any concessions to someone who is embarrassing them so determinedly?

Maybe a dirty quick deal will be cut to find a face-saving formula for all concerned. Or not.