The wife of a dissident Chinese lawyer missing for more than a year said she was relieved to learn he is alive and appealed yesterday to the government to allow him to leave China and join his family in the US.
Attorney Gao Zhisheng (高智晟) resurfaced suddenly on Sunday, saying he was living in northern China, but it was not clear under what conditions.
Before being jailed and otherwise muzzled four years ago, Gao was the most dauntless of a new group of civil liberties lawyers. He took on sensitive cases involving underground Christians and the banned Falun Gong and advocated constitutional reform.
Since he went missing on Feb. 4 last year from his hometown, the government has given vague explanations about Gao’s whereabouts, heightening worries he had been jailed or tortured as he was previously.
“I am tremendously relieved that my husband is alive,” Gao’s wife, Geng He (耿和), said in a statement issued by Freedom Now, a non-governmental organization that represents prisoners of conscience.
Geng and her two children fled China a month before Gao was detained and now live in the US.
“I am so happy that my children were able to speak to him,” she said. “My children and I have not seen their father since January 2009. We urge the Chinese government to allow Zhisheng to leave the country and be reunited with us in the United States.”
Contacted briefly on Sunday on his cellphone, Gao said he was living in Wutai Shan, a mountain range famous as a Buddhist retreat, and that he was “free at present.”
“I just want to be in peace and quiet for a while and be reunited with my family,” Gao said. “Most people belong with family. I have not been with mine for a long time. This is a mistake and I want to correct this mistake.”
Li Heping (李和平), a Beijing-based human rights lawyer and friend of Gao’s, said he also spoke briefly with Gao and believed Gao was being followed by authorities.
“I believe he does not have freedom,” Li said. “First, when we were speaking, he sounded like he wanted to hang up. He told me that he had friends around him. I’m sure that the people around him are limiting what he can say.”
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
RSS