International organizations are calling for the release of Gao Zhisheng, a world-renowned human rights lawyer.
Gao defended house church Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, and other minorities from the clutches of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Unfortunately, his activism put a target on his back. No one has seen or heard from him in six years.
FORCED DISAPPEARANCE
Many human rights lawyers and other oppressed groups are “forcibly disappeared” like Gao. The Communist Regime does not notify their families of the confinement and keeps their well-being hidden or obscure. Meanwhile, authorities brutally torture the imprisoned human rights lawyers in secret.
Today, other human rights groups signed an open letter, calling upon the CCP to release Gao Zhisheng and to stop the practice of forced disappearance. ChinaAid signed the statement as well.
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We, the undersigned organizations, call on the Chinese authorities to immediately and unconditionally release prominent human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng (???) ahead of the sixth anniversary of his disappearance on August 13.
An immensely powerful statement by @Genghe1 about the long-disappeared lawyer @GaoZhisheng, a courageous figure who has suffered immensely in #China’s fight for basic freedoms. @tengbiao @ZhouFengSuo @Suyutong @cecc @jeromeacohen https://t.co/NzUchwWoiD
— Terry Halliday (@HallidayTerry) August 12, 2023
And as we near “The International Day of the Disappeared” on August 30, we also condemn the Chinese government’s use of enforced disappearances as a tactic to silence and control activists, religious practitioners, Uyghurs and Tibetans, and even high-profile celebrities, entrepreneurs, and government officials.
GAO ZHISHENG: DISAPPEARED FOR THE SIXTH YEAR
Gao Zhisheng was one of the first human rights lawyers to emerge in the early 2000s and he became an important leader of China’s rights defense movement. He took on cases to help migrant workers and defend spiritual practitioners, including Falun Gong adherents and Christians. Gao wrote open letters to China’s top political leadership to call attention to the plight of Falun Gong practitioners and the abuse he had suffered while defending them.
In 2006, Gao was sentenced to three years in prison on the charge of “inciting subversion of state power,” and after being released on parole, he was repeatedly disappeared for extended periods and tortured by police between 2007 and 2011. In December 2011, state media reported that Gao had been imprisoned in the Uyghur region to serve out his sentence after violating terms of his parole. He was then released in 2014 but remained under house arrest.
Gao’s relatives in China, as well as fellow rights lawyers and activists, who previously remained in contact with him, have not heard from him since August 13, 2017. Ever since then, Chinese authorities have, implausibly, claimed that Gao is not under any “criminal coercive measures.”
Over the past six years, Gao has effectively remained in a state of enforced disappearance.
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https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4969657
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/11/china-human-rights-lawyer-detained-laos/
https://www.uscirf.gov/religious-prisoners-conscience/forb-victims-database/gao-zhisheng
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gao_Zhisheng
