The Epoch Times / Wikimedia Commons
CV NEWS FEED // A Chinese human rights lawyer whose whereabouts have remained unknown for the past seven years has recently turned 60, according to his wife and family members.
Asia News reported in an April 27 article that Chinese authorities have continued to veil the status of Christian-convert Gao Zhisheng, despite calls from numerous NGOs and UN agencies to reveal his current location and condition. Chinese authorities arrested Zhisheng in August 2017 while he was under house arrest in a cave dwelling in his hometown.
According to the report, Zhisheng is “one of the first human rights lawyers to gain public visibility in the early 2000s,” defending cases for exploited groups such as migrant workers and those who have suffered religious persecution at the hands of Chinese communist authorities.
Zhisheng was first convicted of “inciting subversion of state power,” in 2006 and sentenced to three years in prison. After being released on parole, he reportedly went missing on multiple occasions between 2007 and 2011.
In December 2011, authorities detained Zhisheng for allegedly violating the terms of his parole and did not release him until August 2014. During this time, Asia News reported that Zhisheng suffered “horrific torture” at the hands of Chinese authorities.
“I am completely devastated by what the Chinese government has done to my husband,” his wife, Geng He, told the global news outlet at the time, revealing that Chinese authorities had starved her husband of both food and human contact, resulting in him losing nearly 50 pounds and the ability to speak intelligibly.
She added:
The only thing I feared more than him being killed was his suffering relentless and horrific torture and being kept alive.
If President Xi Jinping has any sense of decency or humanity, after crushing my husband both physically and psychologically, the least he could do is allow me as a devoted wife to care for him.
Zhisheng spent the next three years after his release under house arrest, until his most recent enforced disappearance on the morning of Aug. 13, 2017.
