France, Germany and other states that have coddled up to the Communist dictatorship in Beijing will one day have to answer to the Chinese people, one of the country's leading civil-rights activist has said.
Gao Zhisheng (高智晟), a firebrand lawyer who has defended hundreds of victims of torture and persecution, said in an interview that the Chinese Communist Party was responsible for more deaths than the Nazis, but Western governments turned a blind eye because they were desperate to trade with the world's fastest growing economy.
"When the Nazis slaughtered Jews, the outside world condemned them," he said. "But the Communist Party has taken the lives of 80 million people, 13 times more than the death toll among the Jews, yet the world says nothing," he said.
Gao's comments are particularly remarkable because he still lives in Beijing, where he is vulnerable to retribution. He says his telephone is bugged, his 12-year-old daughter is followed to school and more than 30 agents monitor his every move. Last month, his law firm's license was revoked and last week he was warned he faces arrest. Ten days ago an unmarked car attempted to run him down.
But he is defiant.
Already one of the most prominent lawyers of his generation, Gao, 41 has taken a public stand -- via the Internet -- in favor of the most oppressed groups in China: democracy campaigners, victims of religious persecution, mine accident widows and peasants who have had their land seized by the authorities.
"The Communist party has done too many evil and cruel things. So I must fight them," he said.
His office is a small, sparsely furnished flat in a giant residential complex in the Chaoyang district of Beijing, a familiar location to those in China with a cause or burning sense of injustice. So many come to him that the guards on the gate need no prompting to direct strangers to "that lawyer." It is below zero outside, but Gao says that does not put off his state security minders. What does make them flinch is his video camera.
"They bug me, but I don't care. They are the ones who are afraid of exposure," he said. "When I point this camera at them, they try to conceal their faces. They know one day they will be called to account."
Turning his enemies' weapons against them is a typical Gao tactic, as is pushing a situation to its limits. Last year, he went to investigate the government's confiscation of private oil wells in Shaanxi Province. On the way, he heard the authorities were waiting to detain him, so he drove to the police station and confronted the commanding officer.
"I told him I had saved him a lot of bother so the least he could do is pay for my transport costs," he said. "He reimbursed me my car rental fee and arranged for a police car to drive me home."
His visits to China's provincial badlands do not usually end on such a light note. Last month, Gao slipped his minders to investigate claims of police torture and sexual abuse in Changchun, the provincial capital of Jilin. The alleged victims were practioners of Falun Gong -- deemed by the state an illegal religious organization.
By the time, he arrived, Gao said many were already dead.
"A mother and son died in police custody within 10 days of each other," he said. "Police told the boy's father he had committed suicide by jumping from a window, but they wouldn't let him see the scene of death or the body. They still have the corpse more than a month later. It is disgraceful."
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