Misery endures for Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, ‘freed’ after three years in solitary confinement
A prominent human rights lawyer has been kept under house arrest and denied medical care since his release two years ago, his daughter said in Hong Kong yesterday.
Gao Zhisheng, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was under house arrest in a remote village in Shaanxi province, where he lives with his brother, and was not permitted to leave the courtyard of their home, said Geng Ge.
Gao, 52, could eat only liquid foods because of the poor condition of his teeth and he had not been allowed to visit a dentist, said Geng, 23.
Unbowed, unbent, unbroken: Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng speaks out on his torture with an electric baton
She was in the city to present her father’s latest book, Stand Up China 2017 – China’s Hope: What I Learned During Five Years as a Political Prisoner.
The family has been living apart, with Geng and her mother living in the United States, while Gao remains on the mainland, she said. She had not seen her father in seven years and communication remained difficult, she said. Their last conversation, which took place about six weeks ago, was possible only because the guards happened to stray from their post, she said.
Gao rose to international prominence for defending members of the banned Falun Gong sect and fighting for farmers’ land rights. He has been in and out of detention since 2006, but in 2010, he angered authorities by publicly denouncing the torture he said he had undergone. He was jailed for three years in 2011 for “instigating subversion of the state” and was released in August 2014.
He spent those three years in solitary confinement, according to his book, the manuscript of which was smuggled out of the mainland.