The wife of a prominent Chinese dissident said on Thursday she’s worried about the safety of her husband, who has been missing since he was last seen in China six months ago.
Geng He (耿和) said she has not spoken to her husband, attorney Gao Zhisheng (高智晟), since April, and she and her relatives do not know where he is.
“I know nothing of my husband’s situation right now,” Geng said through a translator during an interview in Sunnyvale, California.
Geng and her children were granted asylum in the US and she has been working to find Gao, who was considered a candidate for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The award went to Chinese imprisoned democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波).
Before being jailed and otherwise muzzled four years ago, Gao was the most dauntless of a new group of civil liberties lawyers. He advocated constitutional reform and took on sensitive cases involving underground Christians and the banned Falun Gong spiritual group, angering China’s authoritarian government.
When Gao first disappeared in February last year, the Chinese government gave vague explanations about his whereabouts, heightening worries he had been jailed or tortured as he was previously. The US and the EU called on China to investigate his disappearance.
Gao was missing for more than a year before he resurfaced in March and said he was abandoning his role as a government critic and hoped he could reunite with his family. He said he didn’t want to discuss his disappearance or whether he had been held and mistreated by the authorities.
Geng said she last spoke to him in April, shortly before he disappeared again after visiting his in-laws in far western China.
She said her husband is a good man who cares deeply about justice and has not done anything wrong.
“The only thing he did was help his clients defend their legal rights,” she said.
Geng said her children are becoming increasingly worried about their father.
“They need their father,” she said. “I don’t want to see them grow up without the love of their father.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was