#GaoZhisheng kidnapped again following release of experiences,
torture details - China Aid:
http://www.chinaaid.org/2015/09/gao-zhisheng-kidnapped-again-following.html
Gao Zhisheng kidnapped again following release of experiences,
torture details
Thursday, September 24, 2015
China Aid
By Rachel Ritchie
(Yulin, Shaanxi—Sept. 24, 2015) China Aid just learned the human
rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who authorized the release of details
concerning his torture in a Chinese prison yesterday, has been
kidnapped, as he predicted would happen.
Sources say Public Security Bureau officers arrived at Gao’s home at
approximately 1 p.m. and began frantically searching for Gao.
Gao previously told China Aid that he expected to be detained again
after the release of his interviews with China Aid and the
Associated Press and that he was prepared to be disappeared in to
police custody.
He told China Aid founder and president, Bob Fu, that he was also
prepared to be tortured again, because “torture can’t truly hurt”
him anymore—that the Chinese dictators will be hurt the most by
their actions. Gao added that he does not hate his persecutors.
China Aid calls for President Obama to immediately and resolutely
press Chinese President Xi Jinping about Gao’s and call for his
unconditional and immediate release.
China Aid Contacts
Rachel Ritchie, English Media Director
Cell:
(432) 553-1080 | Office: 1+
(888) 889-7757 | Other: (432)
689-6985
Email:
r.ri...@chinaaid.org
Website:
www.chinaaid.org
Interview with Gao Zhisheng
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DflUjveJNGU
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/leading-china-lawyer-speaks-out-says-he-was-tortured-again/2015/09/23/ee3ea03c-61f8-11e5-8475-781cc9851652_story.html
http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/crime/article/Leading-China-lawyer-speaks-out-says-he-was-6523906.php
AP Exclusive: Leading China lawyer says he was tortured
Isolda Morillo and Didi Tang, Associated Press
September 23, 2015 Updated: September 24, 2015 12:05am
BEIJING (AP) — In his first interview in five years, leading Chinese
rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng said he was tortured with an electric
baton to his face and spent three years in solitary confinement
during his latest period of detention since 2010.
The Nobel Peace Prize nominee also vowed to never leave China
despite the hardships and having to live apart from his family.
For years, Gao's supporters feared he might perish inside a remote
Chinese prison. He survived his prison term. But when he was
released in August 2014 from prison to house arrest, the formerly
outspoken lawyer could barely walk or speak a full, intelligible
sentence, raising concerns that one of the most inspirational
figures in China's rights movement had been permanently broken —
physically and mentally.
He is now speaking out once again in an exclusive interview with The
Associated Press.
"Every time we emerge from the prison alive, it is a defeat for our
opponents," Gao said in the face-to-face interview.
Gao, who lives under near-constant guard in Shaanxi province, gave
the interview earlier this year on the condition that it not be
published or aired for several months, until he could finish the
manuscripts of two books and send them safely outside of China for
publication, which he now says he has done. He also later sent the
AP his manuscripts and gave permission to quote from them.
The 51-year-old attorney gained international recognition for his
courage defending members of the outlawed spiritual movement Falun
Gong and fighting for the land rights of farmers. In and out of
detention since 2006, Gao upset authorities in 2010 by publicly
denouncing the torture he said he had undergone.
Faxed questions to the Chinese ministries of public security,
justice and foreign affairs regarding Gao's allegations of torture
and his current condition were not answered.
In this year's interview and in one of his books, he recounts a new
round of torture as well as three years in solitary confinement
which he says he survived thanks only to his faith in God and his
unwavering hope for China. He also declared his decision not to go
into exile outside China, even if that means being separated from
his wife, daughter and son, who are living in the United States.
"I thought about giving up and giving my time to my family, but it's
the mission God has given me" to stay in China, said Gao, a
Christian.
Gao's wife, Geng He, said in an interview in California that she
does not understand why her husband was imprisoned, and why he
continues to be kept under house arrest.
"I don't understand why the government has to imprison him. He is
just a lawyer. His legal profession requires him to help and serve
others. Why is he being treated like this?" she said in the
interview in the city of Cupertino. "He is standing up for greater
freedom in China."
She said in the interview Monday that she hopes Chinese President Xi
Jinping and President Barack Obama discuss her husband's case when
they meet in Washington this week.
A day later, she posted on her Twitter account a letter from her
husband urging her to decline an invitation to meet with a U.S.
deputy secretary of state on Wednesday ahead of the summit. Gao told
her in the letter that such a meeting would be futile while U.S.
politicians rub shoulders with the head of China's ruling Communist
Party.
Since the administration of President Bill Clinton, "the American
political class has disregarded the basic humanitarian principles
and muddied itself by getting so close to the sinister Communist
Party," Gao wrote, according to his wife.
One of Gao's two books — yet to be published — predicts that the
authoritarian rule under China's Communist Party will end in 2017 —
a revelation he says he received from God. He also outlines a plan
to build up a democratic, modern China after the party's collapse.
Much of the book also details inhumane treatment behind bars.
The second book is addressed to his son and tells his family's
story.
Jerome Cohen, a law professor at New York University and an expert
on China's legal system, said Gao has become a symbol of the
repression of rights lawyers in China and that it was heartening to
hear that he had given an interview.
"I had worried that Gao had become a forgotten man," Cohen said. "He
was the leading human rights lawyer in China. He was a bold,
courageous, outspoken person, and they broke him, they broke him in
the cruelest way."
Since his release from Shaya Prison in the far western region of
Xinjiang, Gao has been staying with his oldest brother inside a
family home in a cave scooped out of a cliff in Gao's native Shaanxi
province. He is under watch nearly around the clock.
Convicted in 2006 of subversion and sentenced to three years, he was
released on probation but was periodically taken away for torture,
he said. After his wife and children fled China in January 2009, Gao
was secretly detained again by security agents. He briefly
resurfaced from state detention in April 2010, when he met his
family and gave an interview to the AP detailing how he was hooded
and beaten.
He disappeared the next day.
At that time, he was detained again, he said in this year's
interview and in his manuscript. In his book he says he endured more
torture, including with an electric baton to his face — a moment
that he remembers as a near out-of-body experience when he heard his
own voice.
"Undoubtedly, it was from me. I don't know how to describe it," Gao
wrote. "That sound was almost like a dog howling when its tail is
forcibly stepped on by its master. Sometimes it sounded like what a
puppy makes when it's hung upside by its tail."
Gao said that during all his years of detention he was able to build
up a mental barrier against the physical perception of pain. "This
is a special ability I have acquired to allow me to survive
difficult times," Gao said in the interview.
Gao said he was secretly tried in December 2011. It was only then
that the government said it was moving Gao to prison, the first time
it had acknowledged holding him.
He said he was hooded and taken outside for the first time in 21
months in the winter of 2011. "It was the first time I heard a dog
bark and that I could breathe fresh air," he said.
After he was moved to a prison in Xinjiang, he was no longer
physically beaten for any long stretch of time, but he was confined
to a room of 8 square meters (86 square feet) without windows or
ventilation for three years — so long that he said he could not cope
with wider spaces upon release. "I found I could not walk at the
airport, but I could walk inside the lock-up room," he said.
Gao said that during one period of his three years in the Xinjiang
prison, authorities installed a loudspeaker in his cell that sent
out propaganda on socialist values for 68 weeks straight.
"You cannot imagine the mental harassment they inflicted upon me,"
Gao said.
Now out of prison, Gao said he is able to speak daily to his wife
and children in California. He said he wants to be reunited with his
family but that he feels he must stay in China.
"My wife is suffering, but I can do nothing," he said. "I understand
those persecuted souls who have left China and I am glad for them,
but I cannot be among them. I cannot go," Gao said.
AP Exclusive: Leading China lawyer says he was tortured
AP News | Sep 24, 2015
In this photo taken earlier in 2015, Gao Zhisheng listens to
journalists in a cave home while sitting near photos of his son and
one of his daughter with former U.S. President George Bush during an
interview in northwestern China's Shaanxi province. Leading Chinese
rights lawyer Gao said in his first interview in five years that he
was tortured with an electric baton to the face and spent three
years in solitary confinement during his latest period of detention
since 2010.
In this photo taken earlier in 2015, Gao Zhisheng talks to
journalists in a cave home in northwestern China's Shaanxi province.
Leading Chinese rights lawyer Gao said in his first interview in
five years that he was tortured with an electric baton to the face
and spent three years in solitary confinement during his latest
period of detention since 2010.
In this photo taken earlier in 2015, Gao Zhisheng walks past photos
of his relatives in a cave home in northwestern China's Shaanxi
province. Leading Chinese rights lawyer Gao said in his first
interview in five years that he was tortured with an electric baton
to the face and spent three years in solitary confinement during his
latest period of detention since 2010.