China: Disappeared Activist At Risk Of Torture

Gao Zhisheng is one of the most respected human rights lawyers in China, with the Ministry of Justice naming him "one of the nation’s top 10 lawyers" in 2001 for his pro bono work on public interest cases. Despite this, Gao Zhisheng has been subjected to enforced disappearance, torture, illegal house arrest and detention as a result of his work, which includes representing human rights activists and working on other politically sensitive cases. In late 2005, the Beijing Municipal Justice Bureau revoked his lawyer’s license and suspended the operations of his law firm, Shengzhi Law Office. This was a direct result of Gao Zhisheng’s open letters to the government calling on them to stop religious persecution, including persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

In February 2006 Gao Zhisheng organized a hunger strike campaign to draw attention to the persecution of human rights activists in China. Shortly after the campaign ended, the authorities detained Gao Zhisheng on 22 August and held him without charge. After a month, on 21 September, he was charged with the vaguely-defined offence of "inciting subversion of state power". In December 2006, he was given a three-year suspended prison sentence with a five-year reprieve.

In April 2010, he told Associated Press in an interview that he was tortured while in detention. Shortly after that he went missing again and his whereabouts were unknown for almost 20 months. In December 2011, state media announced that Gao Zhisheng had violated terms of his suspended sentence and was therefore sent to serve his three-year sentence in prison.

Due to the constant harassment by authorities, including freezing the family bank accounts and preventing his children from attending school, Gao Zhisheng’s family fled China in March 2009 and currently reside in the United States. In October 2010, his daughter Grace Geng wrote an open letter to the President of the United States of America saying “President Obama, as the father of two girls yourself, please ask President Hu Jintao of China to tell this daughter where her father is.” After he was released from prison in 2014, Gao Zhisheng has been living with his elder brother’s family in an isolated village in Shaanxi province under tight surveillance. His family said he had suffered abuse in prison and malnutrition that led to severe damage to his teeth which, three years later, still makes it difficult for him to eat solid food. According to his family, the authorities had barred Gao Zhisheng from leaving the village to receive medical and dental treatment. Despite his difficult situation, he has remained outspoken about human rights and continues to criticize the Chinese Communist Party.

In 2016, Gao Zhisheng launched a memoir titled “'The year 2017, Stand Up China” with the help of his daughter Grace Geng. In the book, Gao Zhisheng detailed his treatment while in detention from 2009 to 2014 and told of his life after he was released and sent to Shaanxi to live under round-the-clock police surveillance with his elder brother, Gao Yisheng. He wrote the book as a way of continuing his resistance against human rights violations perpetrated by the Chinese authorities.

Activists and human rights defenders in China continued to be systematically subjected to monitoring, harassment, intimidation, arrest and detention. Few punishments are as cruel and deliberate as enforced disappearances. People are wrenched away from their loved ones by state officials or others acting on their behalf. They deny the person is in their custody or refuse to say where they are. Families are plunged into a state of anguish, trying to keep the flame of hope alive while fearing the worst. They may be in this limbo for years.