Protect Human Rights Lawyer Zhisheng in China
Posted October 6th, 2007 by April | Philly Center City, Take Action
Center City group member Cindy asks that we participate in this Urgent Action.
I would like to forward you a call for urgent action by the AI Australia on rescue Mr. Gao Zhisheng. Gao Zhisheng, a leading Chinese dissident and a human rights attorney, sent an open letter to the U.S. Congress recently and soon he was arrested and his whereabouts is unknown.
Known as “China’s conscience”, Mr. Gao Zhisheng is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and American Board of Trial Advocates’ Courageous Advocacy award recipient. He recently sent a 15-page letter with first hand information, statistics and evidence to the US Congress expressing his deep concerns over the Beijing Olympics: the human rights in China have deteriorated even more ahead of the Olympic Games. This letter represents voices of many other Chinese in China.
Background:
Mr. Gao Zhisheng has been featured on the cover of The New York Times. He authored China More Just: My Fight as a Rights Lawyer in the World in the Largest Communist State and was named as one of China’s top ten lawyers in 2001 and has worked for the gamut of China’s vulnerable groups, including coal miners, home-demolition victims, and house church members.
While facing surveillance, house arrest, detention, interrogations, threats, and even attempts on his life, Gao managed to rally China’s activists and legal community around the cause of human rights like no one before him. He has publicly renounced his Chinese Communist Party membership, along with 26 million other Chinese people.
Gao has dealt with many high-profile cases. He wrote open letters to the National People’s Congress, stating that the prison terms and fines imposed on Falun Gong practitioners are in complete violation of basic legal principles and contemporary legal norms. He revealed the suppression of Christian house churches, challenged corruption by local officials, and provided legal assistance to Chen Guangcheng, a blind rights advocate working on rural poverty, forced abortion, and forced sterilization.
Gao is widely regarded as the “conscience of China” and “the symbol of China.” He volunteered to be an investigator for CIPFG (the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong) despite the danger of carrying out such missions in China.
Cindy
Here is Gao Zhisheng’s Urgent Action file from the AIUSA website. Please download it and write a letter on his behalf.