Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese human-rights activist who made a daring escape from house arrest in 2012, doubts that Hillary Clinton will fight for human rights in his country if she wins the White House.

“So far I can’t tell that she’s [headed in] that direction,” Chen says through an interpreter in an interview with National Review, after receiving the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Thursday night.

Chen recalls facing “huge pressure” to leave the U.S. embassy in Beijing when he sought refuge there after his escape from house arrest. He offers a forceful denunciation of President Obama’s record as a supporter of human rights worldwide.

“No matter who will be the next president, I don’t want to see the continuity of President Obama’s policy on human rights,” he says. “The weak position of the United States government, particularly the administration’s handling of human-rights issues with constant accommodation of [authoritarian] regimes, not only [hurts people under tyranny], but [is] also . . . a direct threat to free democracy.”

#share#The human-rights activist is unsure whether Clinton would fight to end the Communist regime’s strict family-planning policy, which limits the number of children a family is allowed. “I don’t know what she’s going to do, even if she becomes president,” he says. “But what I want to say is this: Any future U.S. president should help abolish the family planning in China, particularly those forced abortions, because that is the most invasive human-rights . . . policy anywhere in the world.”

#related#Chen has made opposition to that policy his life’s work. He was imprisoned for four years and tortured after filing a class-action lawsuit against local-government family-planning officials. When he was released, a local official complained to him that his advocacy had resulted in the births of 90,000 babies in the area, he recalls through the interpreter. “This evil policy in China must be ended,” he says.

— Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.