Reporters Without Borders said in it’s 2005 special report titled “Xinhua: the world’s biggest propaganda agency”, that “Xinhua remains the voice of the sole party”, “particularly during the SARS epidemic, Xinhua has for last few months been putting out news reports embarrassing to the government, but they are designed to fool the international community, since they are not published in Chinese.”
Mainland human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng was released from prison yesterday, his wife said, but she believed he had been tortured in jail and voiced fears for his safety. Read the rest of this entry »
Authorities at remote Shaya Prison in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang on Thursday released prominent dissident and rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng at the end of a jail term of nearly three years. Read the rest of this entry »
By Zhang Min, program host of “Journey of the Soul” on July 12, 2014), Radio Free Asia,
Translated by China Aid
Gao Zhisheng is going to finish serving his 8-year sentence, including three years in prison and five years’ probation. His family asked to pick him up from prison, but was told that the prison would need to communicate with Beijing first. Read the rest of this entry »
Geng He, wife of imprisoned Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng called on President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to raise their voices for her husband’s release, in an interview Jan 30 with the Sound of Hope Radio network (SOH).
Geng fled China with the couple’s two children in 2009, and they are currently living in the United States. Gao Zhisheng has been in and out of prison and brutally tortured for his outspokenness about the lack of human rights in China and for defending members of blacklisted groups, including Falun Gong practitioners. Read the rest of this entry »
Jailed Chinese Christian human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng is getting help from the US Congress. He is one of two prisoners selected by the Defending Freedoms Project of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. It’s a bipartisan committee of the US House of Representatives.
US Representative Frank Wolf of Virginia wrote a letter to Gao on January 22nd informing Gao of his selection, and promised to work in support of his release. Read the rest of this entry »
(Epochtimes)- Prominent Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng’s five-year probation period ended on Aug. 14, and his family wants him to come home alive.
Gao has been missing for 16 months since a brief public appearance in April 2010, after which he was again taken into extralegal custody by Chinese authorities; they told Gao’s family little more than that he has “gone missing.” He had been in detention, with no legal procedures, for a year before that short-lived reappearance. Read the rest of this entry »
(Guardian)- The brother of missing Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng has issued a plea for news of his whereabouts, and believes that he remains in extra-judicial detention despite recently ending a five-year probationary period.
Gao is among China’s most prominent dissidents and his case may be among the human rights issues raised by the US vice-president, Joe Biden, who arrives in China on Wednesday.
A rights advocate who tackled many causes anathema to the ruling Communist party, Gao was sentenced to three years in jail in 2006 for “inciting subversion of state power”, a charge often used to punish critics of one-party rule. Read the rest of this entry »
(ChristianToday)- The missing Christian human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng’s 2006 probationary sentence for “subversion of state power” is due to expire on 14 August. He has not been heard from for almost 18 months and repeated inquiries to the Chinese authorities have not been met with a response.
Gao Zhisheng was sentenced three years’ imprisonment and five years’ probation in 2006. In a letter to Gao, published by China Aid, his wife Geng He wrote, “This August 14 is the last day of the probation period and should be the date when you regain freedom. I am looking forward to this day and to hearing your voice and to our family being reunited. The whole family looks forward to this day!” Read the rest of this entry »
(The freedom Now) Washington, D.C.: The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has called on the government “to proceed to an immediate release of Mr. Zhisheng Gao and provide for reparation of the harm caused” by his illegal detention. The Chinese government began targeting Gao after he began representing religious minorities in politically sensitive cases. In retaliation for this work, the government revoked his law license, shuttered his law firm, and placed his family under intense surveillance. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in China, Gao Zhisheng, Human Rights, Law, Lawyer, News, People, World | Comments Off on Press Release: U.N. Calls for Immediate Release of Disappeared and Tortured Chinese Human Rights Lawyer Gao Zhisheng
(New York Times) BEIJING — A United Nations human rights agency has demanded that the Chinese government immediately release a prominent Chinese human rights lawyer who has been detained for nearly a year, according to a statement released on Monday by an advocacy group. The lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, had said he was tortured during previous rounds of detention.
The agency, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, also said in a written statement that the Chinese government should “provide for reparation of the harm caused” to the lawyer, Gao Zhisheng. A feisty Christian who has been repeatedly detained — and tortured, by his account — Mr. Gao has defended practitioners of Falun Gong, the banned spiritual group that came under a brutal crackdown by Chinese security forces. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in China, Gao Zhisheng, Human Rights, Law, Lawyer, News, People, World | Comments Off on U.N. Rights Group Calls on China to Release Detained Lawyer Gao Zhisheng and “provide for reparation of the harm caused”
(Reuters) – China’s best known rights lawyer, missing for nearly a year, is being detained in violation of international law, a United Nations human rights body said in a statement made public on Monday, and it called for his immediate release. Read the rest of this entry »
Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng was named the winner of the Bindmans Law and Campaigning Award at tonight’s Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression awards, sponsored by SAGE.
Gao Zhisheng was unable to attend and his wife, Geng He, accepted the award on his behalf, via video.
WASHINGTON—It would be best if, hours before Hu Jintao’s arrival, human rights atrocities in China were not relegated to being discussed in a small, overheated room tucked away in a Congressional office building—but those who concern themselves with the topic will usually take what they can get.
What they got was dozens of journalists and observers shoulder to shoulder in a committee room in the Rayburn Building, where they expounded upon, often in painful detail, the Chinese Communist Party’s apparently insatiable appetite for destroying human life. Read the rest of this entry »
The wife of Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese human rights lawyer who revealed details of the torture he endured in detention in China, says she has not heard from her husband since he went missing again last April and fears for his life.
Geng He traveled from her home in the San Francisco Bay area to Washington this week to add her voice to a growing chorus that wants President Obama to press the issue of human rights when he meets with Chinese President Hu Jintao at the White House. Read the rest of this entry »
Seizing the timing of Hu Jintao’s much vaunted visit to the United States, friends of abducted civil rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng have called for his release.
Gao, by now a renowned figure internationally, has been missing since April 2010. Beijing human rights lawyers Jiang Tianyong, Tang Jitian, and Xie Yanyi have demanded that authorities release Gao, also condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) human rights atrocities. Read the rest of this entry »
(Beijing—Jan. 18, 2010) Nineteen Beijing lawyers have written an open letter opposing the use of torture in response to recent reports of police torture inflicted on Christian human rights lawyers Fan Yafeng and Gao Zhisheng. The text of the letter, which was obtained by ChinaAid, reads:
According to recent reports, the well-known Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng was subjected to cruel torture and abuse during his disappearance, the first of which lasted 14 months, after which he has disappeared again for more than eight months. Reports have also trickled forth about the former Chinese Academy of Social Sciences research associate Fan Yafeng, who on Dec. 9, 2010 was taken away to a secret location by police who first put a black hood over his head. He was then tortured for several straight days. Read the rest of this entry »
Editor’s note: In 2007 the Chinese civil rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng wrote the article “Dark Night, Dark Hood, and Kidnapping by Dark Mafia,” which gives a harrowing account of 50 days of torture he endured at the hands of Chinese security agents in September, October, and November 2007. The article was released for publication after Gao was once again arrested on Feb. 6, 2009. Gao’s wife, Geng He, recently discovered the prologue to “Dark Night,” the article “Speaking From My Heart.” She has authorized The Epoch Times to publish it for the first time in English.
Under Heaven’s watchful eye, and amidst the vast free and civilized world, there is no evil that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would shy away from or is incapable of. It is truly shocking!
Even though China possesses 1.3 billion fellow citizens, my family, bereft of support, can be so very helpless! Read the rest of this entry »
When the Chancellor, George Osborne, and Michael Bear, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, co-hosted visiting Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang at a cosy dinner at Mansion House on Monday, it is a fair bet that the extra-judicial torture of the man formerly on China’s official list of its 10 best lawyers was not among the topics discussed.
The details of what the Chinese police did to Gao Zhisheng during his mysterious 10-month disappearance would have ruined anyone’s appetite.
The brilliant human rights lawyer, who had risen from an orphaned childhood in a cave dwelling to a starring role in Beijing’s courts, defending citizens against land theft, censorship and religious intolerance, was beaten day and night, temporarily blinded and threatened with death. Read the rest of this entry »
BEIJING — Missing Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has not been heard from since April 2010, said his life “hung by a thread” during a brutal two-day beating by police, The Associated Press has reported.
News of the dramatic account given to the AP last year by Gao, in which the dissident describes how he was stripped naked and violently pistol-whipped for two days, comes a week before Chinese President Hu Jintao visits Washington. Read the rest of this entry »
BEIJING — The police stripped Gao Zhisheng bare and pummeled him with handguns in holsters. For two days and nights, they took turns beating him and did things he refused to describe. When all three officers tired, they bound his arms and legs with plastic bags and threw him to the floor until they caught their breath to resume the abuse.
“That degree of cruelty, there’s no way to recount it,” the civil rights lawyer said, his normally commanding voice quavering. ” For 48 hours my life hung by a thread.” Read the rest of this entry »
By GRACE GENG, 17-year-old daughter of Chinese human-rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, via Wall Street Journal, Oct 27, 2010 –
Six months ago last week, the Chinese government kidnapped my father, Gao Zhisheng. He was abducted for exercising his right to freedoms of speech and association, rights enshrined in the Chinese constitution. My father’s exercise of these most fundamental of freedoms cost our family our livelihood, our country, and now, I fear, my father’s life. As President Barack Obama heads to the Group of 20 meeting in Seoul next month and meets with Chinese President Hu Jintao, I beg him to raise my father’s case.
My father is a lawyer, an increasingly dangerous profession in China. As all lawyers should, he defended his clients vigorously. He exposed the torment faced by oppressed religious minorities in China. He demanded rights guaranteed by law for disabled children, coal miners and other vulnerable groups. But in return, the government shut down my father’s law firm. They took away his access to the courts, effectively taking away his livelihood. But even that wasn’t enough. Read the rest of this entry »
Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize has brought much-need attention to the struggle of others working for liberty in China. Gao Zhisheng, a human-rights lawyer who has been missing since April, is another example of how Beijing silences troublemakers. Mr. Gao hasn’t had the privilege of courts and jails but has simply disappeared, without any official word on the circumstances of what his family and most observers believe to be his detention by the government.
Last week Mr. Gao’s older brother was turned away when he went to a Beijing police station to ask about his whereabouts. Officers refused to file a missing persons report or take a written statement from the brother. “They dismissed me entirely; there was nothing I could do,” he told us by phone. Read the rest of this entry »
Reporters Without Borders is deeply concerned by the lack of transparency in the case of human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, one of the first “barefoot lawyers,” who has been missing again since April. The press freedom organization calls on the Chinese authorities to quickly produce evidence that he is still alive. It also urges the international community to press the authorities to shed light on the matter without delay.
His brother, Gao Zhiyi, went to Beijing last week to report his disappearance again to the police and request information.
“I went to see the Beijing authorities in the Chaoyang district last week with two friends of my brother’s, Teng Biao and Li Heping [both well-known human rights lawyers],” he said. “The police told us they knew nothing about my brother’s situation. The authorities then said they were not involved in the matter and did not know where he was. I have no idea where my brother could be.” Read the rest of this entry »
Status of Chinese People 