For the past six years one of China’s most distinguished human rights advocate Gao Zhisheng has been a victim of China’s state system. Once regarded as “one of China’s top ten lawyers”, Gao is now disbarred, behind bars and at real risk of torture.
His crime? He dared to criticise the government’s practices.
Gao had previously called on the Chinese government to stop religious persecution, including persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. He is currently imprisoned for allegedly violating the terms of a three-year suspended sentence given for false and trumped-up charges.
In February 2009, police arrested Gao. He was not charged with an offence. Nor did he appear before a judge following his arrest. Instead he disappeared from sight.
Fourteen months later in March 2010 Gao re-appeared in Beijing for two weeks.
In a televised interview Gao gave during his brief reappearance, he told how he had been held in hostels, farm houses, apartments and prisons in various parts of China. He had been hooded, tied with belts and made to sit still for hours on end. Adding psychological trauma to the mix, he was also told that his children had suffered nervous breakdowns.
That wasn’t the first time Gao had been tortured.
Since 2006, Gao Zhisheng has been repeatedly imprisoned, tortured and held under illegal house arrest. Members of his family have been routinely beaten, starved and intimidated. In October 2006 he was charged and found guilty of “inciting subversion”.
In 2007, after criticising the human rights situation in China in an open letter to the US Congress, plain-clothed police came into his home, stripped him of his clothes and beat him unconscious. He was then taken and held incommunicado for nearly six weeks. Later Gao described how during that illegal detention, he was subjected to violent beatings, repeated electric shocks to his genitals, and lit cigarettes which were held close to his eyes over a prolonged period of time, leaving him partially blind for days afterwards.
In 2010 Gao Zhisheng disappeared for the second time. It wasn’t until a year and a half later, in December 2011, that state media reported that he had violated terms of his suspended sentence and was being sent to serve his sentence in prison. Throughout these months his family did not know where he was or even if he was still alive.
Gao Zhisheng is currently held in a remote prison in Xinjiang in the far west of China. This region has historically been used to hide away political prisoners.
Previous evidence has shown that Gao Zhisheng is at serious risk of being tortured while he’s in prison. Indeed, human rights lawyers in China regularly attract the wrath of China’s government because of their work defending victims of injustice. The clearest message possible must be sent to China’s authorities that Gao must not be harmed and instead released from prison immediately.
Watch Anish Kapoor and others peforming a version of “Gangnam Style” in support of Gao and those like him:
Gao Zhisheng features as part of Amnesty International’s Write for Rights Campaign, which the New Statesman online is supporting as its Christmas campaign. You can play a part in this. Visit www.amnesty.org.uk/gao.
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