Missing Chinese Human Rights Lawyer Gao Zhisheng

  • 14 years ago
Friends, family and human rights groups fear that Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng is dead, after hearing that he has been missing since September.

According to a statement by a U.S. based rights group ChinaAid, Gao's brother Zhiyi recently travelled to Beijing to find the policeman that first detained Gao.

The officer told his brother that Gao had, “Got lost and went missing while out on a walk.”

His wife, Geng He told our NTD correspondent she does not believe the police could lose her husband.

[Geng He, Gao Zhisheng’s Wife]:
“Anyone who has heard about Gao Zhisheng knows that he has been under the Chinese Communist Party's scrutiny for the past few years. If the CCP said Gao Zhisheng is missing, they must explain what they have done to him before he went missing, and what they have done after that. What are the details throughout this incident?”

In December 2006, Gao was convicted of subversion and put under house arrest. He then wrote an open letter to the U.S. Congress in 2007, describing the torture and severe beatings he received in detention, including electric shocks to his genitals and his eyes burned by cigarettes.

Gao was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008. The self-taught lawyer and Chinese dissident is married with two children. His family are now living in asylum in the United States.

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