China Fails to Dispel Mystery About Missing Dissident
Originally published by New York Times, 16 March 2010
HONG KONG — China’s foreign minister waded into the mystery over the disappearance more than a year ago of one of the country’s most prominent human rights lawyers, but his remarks on Tuesday shed little light on the lawyer’s fate.
At a Beijing news conference, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said the lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, had been sentenced to prison for subversion. But Mr. Yang did not say whether he was referring to a new sentence or whether he was citing a suspended sentence that Mr. Gao had received in late 2006 after writing an open letter to President Hu Jintao alleging mistreatment of adherents of the banned Falun Gong movement.
In the 2006 case, Mr. Gao was quickly released after he made a confession. He later said he had been coerced into confessing by state security officials.
Shang Baojun, a prominent human rights lawyer in China who has advised other dissidents, said that Chinese courts had the power to send people released on suspended sentences back to prison without a trial. It was not clear whether that was the case with Mr. Gao.
Mr. Yang, who spoke Tuesday at a joint news conference with Foreign Secretary David Miliband of Britain, said that Mr. Gao had not been tortured, something human rights activists had raised as a possibility. He said nothing to clarify where Mr. Gao was being held. The Foreign Ministry’s press office said afterward that it had no further information.
Mr. Gao had been recognized by China’s Ministry of Justice in 2001 as one of the country’s 10 best lawyers before he began to challenge the government by defending Falun Gong members as well as members of Christian groups.
After his conviction and release in 2006, he lived under surveillance, and he said he feared for his family. Early last year, his wife, Geng He, and the couple’s two children fled Beijing, eventually reaching the United States.
Mr. Gao was arrested four weeks after they left China. Two months ago, his whereabouts and well-being became the subject of international attention when his brother, Gao Zhiyi, said that he had been told by the authorities that his brother was “missing.” The American Embassy in Beijing called for the Chinese government to ensure his safety.
Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, shed little light on Mr. Gao’s legal status when he said a week later that “the relevant judicial authorities have decided this case, and we should say this person, according to Chinese law, is where he should be.”
The mystery deepened further when the Chinese Embassy in Washington told a human rights group last month that Mr. Gao was working in Urumqi, in the Xinjiang region in western China, and had been in contact with his family all along. His wife denied then that she had been in touch with him and appealed to the Chinese government on humanitarian grounds to clarify what had become of her husband.
On Tuesday, the United States Embassy in Beijing repeated its call for Mr. Gao’s release.
“We continue to call on the Chinese government to make Mr. Gao’s welfare and whereabouts known, to ensure that his treatment meets international standards, and to release him from custody,” said Susan Stevenson, an embassy spokeswoman. “We urge the Chinese government to ensure Mr. Gao’s case is treated according to China’s own laws and to be transparent on any action taken on his case.”
The Falun Dafa Information Center, which tracks repression of Falun Gong adherents, said Sunday that an adherent cited in Mr. Gao’s 2005 open letter, Liu Lihua, had died of injuries believed to have been sustained at a detention center. Another adherent cited by Mr. Gao, Wang Yuhuan, was reported to have died in police custody in 2007.