Gao Zhisheng

Christianity in China portal

Gao Zhisheng (Chinese: 高智晟, b. 1966) is a Chinese army veteran and self-taught lawyer who was disbarred, detained, and tortured by the Chinese secret police after taking on human rights cases. These included defending fellow activists, and religious minorities like Falun Gong and Chinese underground Christians. In 2006, he authored a memoir on his life and work, the English translation of which, A China More Just, was subsequently published in 2007.^[1] He was a candidate for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize.^[2] Gao went missing February 4, 2009.

Background

Mr. Gao was born and raised in poverty in a cave dwelling in Shanxi Province with six siblings. He briefly worked in a coal mine and then joined the People's Liberation Army, was stationed at a base in Kashgar, in Xinjiang region, and became a member of the Chinese Communist Party.^[3]

After being discharged, he took a self-taught course on the law and passed the bar exam in 1995. Taking one third of his cases pro-bono, he became known after winning a $100,000 medical malpractice suit in 1999. During his time in Xinjiang, he won a lawsuit for an entrepreneur whose business local officials reclaimed after he had revived it following privatization. Despite winning the case, Gao was forced to leave Xinjiang because harassment by local officials made his legal practice impossible.^[4] In 2000, he moved to Beijing and established the Shengzhi Law Office with a half dozen other lawyers.

In 2001, he was voted as one of the 10 Best Lawyers in China, because of his professionalism and integrity, often helping poor people without fees to sue local Chinese government branches and officials.

In December 2005, he quit the Chinese Communist Party.^[5] “This [Chinese Communist] Party has employed the most savage, most immoral, and most illegal means to torture our mothers, torture our wives, torture our children, and torture our brothers and sisters…Today, I, Gao Zhisheng… formally withdraw from this inhumane, unjust, and evil Party. This is the proudest day of my life.”

Since Gao's disappearance, his wife and two children have been granted asylum in the United States, according to human rights activists.^[6]

Shengzhi law office cases

• A land dispute case against Taishi village officials
• A class-action law suit against local authorities over coercion in implementation of China’s family planning policies
• Won a case for six factory workers from Guangdon province who had been detained for protesting exploitation by their employer.^[7]
• Appealed the sentence of Zheng Yichun, a journalist and former professor who was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in September for his on-line writings
• Provided legal help for Falun Gong practitioners, including Huang Wei, who was illegally sentenced to three years of re-education through labor in Shijiazhuang.^[8]
• Provided legal help for an illegal Chinese house church pastor Cai Zhuohua, who was sentenced to three years in prison for printing and distributing copies of the Bible.^[9]

Targeted and harassed by Chinese secret police

Gao was director, founder, and star litigator of the Beijing-based Shengzhi Law Office. In 2001, he was recognised by China’s Ministry of Justice as "one of the country’s 10 best lawyers". Over the following years, he defended a wide range of clients who had been victims of injustice. Gao’s committed involvement with such cases, he says, is strongly bound with the emphasis of his Christian identity on morality and compassion.^[10]

In 2004, he defended a Falun Gong practitioner who had been illegally persecuted and sentenced without trial to a labor camp. Upon finding that judges refused to hear the case because of “orders from above,” he resorted to writing a letter to the National People’s Congress.^[11] Gao and his family's ordeal started, he says, when his conscience led him to start investigating the persecution of Falun Gong, and subsequently write three open letters to top Chinese officials.

On October 18, 2005, Gao wrote an open letter to Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao urging them to end the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, detailing a wide range of abuses they suffer in custody, including torture, sexual torture, beatings, and executions.^[12] His criticism of China’s human rights situation was remarkable because he lived openly in Beijing, where he was vulnerable for retribution.

Within days of sending the letter and his family were put under 24-hour police surveillance. In early November, his law firm was shut down and soon after his license to practice law suspended.

Amnesty International says "The closure comes shortly after the firm’s director sent an open letter to the Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao urging them to end the “barbaric” persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. It is believed that the closure of the firm is closely linked with this letter. [...] Amnesty International is concerned that this suspension will severely undercut the work of human rights activists in the country."

Gao gave an interview from Dagens Nyheter on 27 February 2006 about his experience with Chinese security forces. At least eight police officers shadowed him and his family, including following his teenage daughter to school.

Later in November, Gao traveled to northeast China with professor of journalism Jiao Guobiao, and spent two weeks interviewing Falun Gong practitioners, investigating the torture they had suffered. Upon his return, he published another open letter to China’s top leaders, detailing what he had found.

“In this letter, I will not circumvent any of the real problems I saw, even if this means I may be arrested as soon as this is published,” he wrote. “With a trembling heart and a trembling pen, I am now writing down the tragic experiences of those who have been persecuted in the last six years [since the regime began persecuting Falun Gong practitioners]… Almost all who have been persecuted, be they male or female, were stripped naked before being tortured…”^[13]

On January 17, 2006, according to Amnesty International, Mr. Gao narrowly escaped an alleged assassination attempt, in the form of a traffic accident ordered by Chinese secret police.^[9] This came in the wake of the release of Gao's research reports on the persecution of Falun Gong in mainland China, his subsequent resignation of CCP membership, and a meeting with Dr. Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.

On February 4, 2006, Gao, together with Hu Jia and other activists, launched a “Relay Hunger Strike for Human Rights,” whereby different activists and citizens fasted for 24 hours in rotation. The hunger strike was joined by people in 29 provinces, as well as overseas, though several participants were arrested for joining.^[14]

On August 15, 2006, after numerous death threats and continued harassment, while visiting his sister's family, Mr. Gao was abducted by the Chinese secret police without any legal proceedings.

On September 21, 2006, he was "officially" arrested. On October 13, his family-appointed lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said that Mr. Gao was suspected of "inciting subversion."^[15]

On December 22, 2006, Mr. Gao was convicted of "subversion." He was sentenced to three years in prison, which was suspended, and placed on probation for five years. The sentence also deprives him of his political rights - the freedom to publish or speak out against the government - for one year.

On June 2, 2007, Gao was beaten by a national security officer after he complained about officers assaulting his wife.

On June 24, 2007, Gao was kidnapped by the Chinese government in order to prevent him from attending an award ceremony in the United States. The American Board of Trial Advocates selected Gao to receive the prestigious Courageous Advocacy Award; they wished to present the award to Gao personally in Santa Barbara, California on June 30, 2007.

In the fall of 2007, Gao’s memoir A China More Just was published in English in the United States.^[16]

On September 22, 2007, after writing open letters to Vice-President of the European Parliament, Edward McMillan-Scott, with whom he maintained contact, and then to US Congress calling for a boycott of the Olympics,^[17] Gao was secretly taken away once again by Chinese secret police. In August 2008 reports surfaced that he had been tortured for close to two months in the same way that Falun Gong practitioners are tortured, where authorities attempted to force him to denounce Falun Gong, that had attempted to commit suicide, and that had been removed from Beijing during the Olympic games.

In the early morning of February 4, 2009 Zhisheng has been taken away by the security police from his home in Shaanxi. He has been missing ever since.^[18][19]

Tortured for 50 days

On February 9, 2009 China Aid.com issued a press release detailing severe torture conducted by Chinese secret police on Gao Zhisheng that lasted more than 50 days, as described in his open letter written on November 28, 2007 and made public on February 9, 2009.

Quoted sentences from Gao's open letter

1. Of course, these words will inevitably bring slight uneasiness or even slight embarrassment to those “good friends and partners” of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) the world over—if these “good friends and partners” still have any trace of reverence to ethics and the value of human conscience.
2. “Gao Zhisheng! You mother f******! Your date with death is today! Bros! Let’s show the bastard how brutal we can get. Kill the bastard.” A leader (I gathered) of the group screamed. Then, four men with electric batons started to beat my head and body with ferocity. Nothing but the noise of the beating and my stressed moaning could be heard in the room. I was beaten so severely that my whole body began shaking uncontrollably on the floor.
3. “Come on guys! Serve the second course for the bastard!” Wang said. All four electric batons started to shock me all over my body at once. All my internal organs and muscles began jumping under my skin uncontrollably, as if they all wanted to escape from these shocks. I was rolling all over the floor in horrific pain. When Wang started to shock my genitals, I begged him to stop. My begging only invited obscene laughers and more maddening torture. Wang shocked my genitals four times while shouting loudly.^[20]

See also

Human rights portal

• Human rights in the People's Republic of China
• Kai fang
• Law of the People's Republic of China
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Persecution of Falun Gong

References

External links

• The Epoch Times International
• Amnesty International 2008 Report states that Gao Zhisheng was tortured in the governments custody.
• Legal Gadfly Bites Hard, and Beijing Slaps Him, New York Times, December 13 2005
• The German Gao Zhisheng Website