Cheng Guangcheng, Blind Chinese Legal Activist, Missing After Reportedly 'Escaping' From House Arrest Supporters of Chen Guangcheng, HO / AP In this undated photo released by supporters of Chen Guangcheng, blind activist Chen Guangcheng, center, is seen in a village in China. On April 22, Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese legal activist named one of TIME's 100 most influential people in 2006, escaped from detention in eastern Shandong province, according to He Peirong, an online advocate who has followed Chen's case for several years. He, an English teacher who was galvanized by Chen's plight to engage in human-rights campaigning, said that Chen contacted her after his escape from his village house, which has been guarded by local security personnel for years. In a post on Chinese microblog site Sina Weibo on the evening of April 26, He said that after Chen called her, she drove a car to Shandong to pick him up and "hid him in a safe place." By the morning of April 27, rumors floated online that Chen - who has been jailed, beaten and harassed for years because of his legal activism on behalf of women who were forced to abort late-term fetuses that were seen as contravening local family-planning regulations - had sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. He posted on Weibo that Chen was either in a safe place or in the hands of the Beijing state security. TIME has not been able to reach the U.S. Embassy spokesman, but the Associated Press has reported that the Americans have refused to comment on the matter. MORE: A Chinese Activist Lost in the System I met Chen in 2005 when I was writing a story on his advocacy on behalf of women who had been forced to undergo abortions or sterilizations by officials in Shandong's Linyi city. Such local punitive measures in fact contravened national regulations on the application of China's so-called one-child policy, but officials in Linyi were worried that their promotions would be compromised because of a high number of extra births in their region. With Chen's help, I met several local women from Linyi, including one who said local doctors strapped her down and shoved a poison-filled needle into her abdomen two days before her due date, killing the baby. "Someone has to fight for people with no voice," Chen told me. I guess that person is me. But just a few hours after our last meeting in Beijing in 2005, local security from Shandong showed up in the Chinese capital, hustled Chen into an unmarked vehicle and took him back home. Since then, he has been in detention, either in jail or under house arrest, along with his wife and child. In 2006, he was sentenced to more than four years in jail on seemingly trumped-up charges of "damaging property and organizing a mob to disturb traffic." Upon his release, Chen was forced into house arrest, along with his wife and daughter. At times, dozens of security officials and local thugs have guarded his home, which remains inaccessible to visiting advocates and local and foreign media. MORE: Enemies of the State? During one of our meetings in Shanghai and Beijing, Chen described how he had evaded local security who were already guarding his home and trying to prevent him from leaving in the late summer of 2005. Because he was blind, he said, he decided to escape at night when those guarding him would be at a disadvantage. Sneaking into a nearby cornfield with a family member, he began throwing gravel in different directions to confuse the security personnel who were trying to follow him. "The night gives me an advantage," Chen said. I can navigate better than people with sight can. After walking for kilometers and meeting up with a friend, Chen was able to drive to safety and eventually turn up in Shanghai and later Beijing, where he tried to meet with national family-planning officials to tell them about the abuses in Linyi. Human Rights in China (HRIC), a New York City-based NGO, published a statement on Friday based on a conversation with Chen's nephew Chen Kegui, whose house is just 200 m away from Chen Guangcheng's. The nephew told HRIC that on April 26, his mother heard one of the guards stationed at the detained legal activist's residence saying, "Chen Guangcheng is no longer here." The same day the nephew reported that his father and another of Chen's brothers were taken away from his house by local authorities. Early on April 27, Chen Kegui told HRIC that local security forces again entered his home and he fought back using kitchen knives before fleeing the area. More: No Olympic Spring for Chinese Dissidents. The ongoing drama surrounding Chen's whereabouts has catalyzed China's online community of human-right sympathizers. "For Chen personally, it's a good thing because he gained his freedom again," an entrepreneur surnamed Liu, who heard about Chen's case and decided to engage in activism on his behalf, said by phone. But I'm not satisfied that there has been any resolution in his case, because he has suffered so many insults for such a long time and no one has been punished for what they did to him. Last October, Liu joined a dozen or so other Chinese online campaigners who traveled to Chen's village to try to meet with him. They say that local thugs robbed them and beat them. Last year, when Hollywood actor Christian Bale tried to do the same thing, amid the glare of trailing CNN cameras, he was also brusquely escorted out of the region. Meanwhile, online activist He appears to have been taken away by security personnel in Nanjing where she lives. Her main Weibo account has been shut down by Chinese authorities. A call to one of her mobile numbers was answered by a man who curtly said "wrong number" before hanging up. He's second-to-last message on Twitter, which is blocked in China but accessible to those using a VPN, was posted early on Friday morning, saying those sympathetic to Chen's case should drive to Shandong and head to State Route 205 because his nephew Chen Kegui was somewhere on that road trying to escape. "Please offer necessary help to him," she wrote. I cannot set out anymore or else I would drive there myself. With reporting by Chengcheng Jiang / Beijing