The wife of missing Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng (高智晟) is going public to urge US President Barack Obama to raise her husband’s case, saying she fears for his life after revelations of abuse.
Gao, who has defended some of China’s most politically sensitive groups, including the Falun Gong spiritual movement and underground Christians, has not been heard from since April, when he recounted a brutal two-day beating.
His wife, Geng He (耿和), sneaked out of China in early 2009 with their two children, journeying by foot to Thailand before escaping to the US. She has since kept a low profile but traveled on Tuesday to Washington as Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) arrived for a closely watched state visit.
“I want him to release my husband immediately so our whole family can be reunited,” Geng said. “I am hoping that I can get my message out.”
Geng pleaded for Obama to ask Hu about her husband, pointing to the US leader’s own writings about growing up with an absent father.
“My 17-year-old daughter and my seven-year-old son miss their father very much. It has been so painful for them,” she said. “Maybe when you missed your father, you knew where he was. But my children don’t know where their father is right now. Maybe he’s no longer alive or maybe he’s being tortured by many people right now.”
Gao, during his brief reappearance in April, said he was stripped naked and violently pistol-whipped for two days in September 2009. He said the beating was even worse than during a previous disappearance, when he said he suffered electric shocks to his genitals and cigarette burns to his eyes.
“You must forget you’re human. You’re a beast,” Gao said his jailers told him, according to an interview he gave to The Associated Press.
The news agency said Gao asked that the account not be published unless he went missing again or found safe haven abroad.
His wife said she had been fearing the worst about Gao. She said his brother saw him in April and told her that “he has been through death.”
Obama invited Hu for a state visit, part of a US effort to broaden cooperation between the world’s largest developed and developing nations.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs insisted that the warm welcome would not mute US appeals to China to improve its human rights record.
Human rights groups have roundly criticized the Obama administration on China, particularly US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s statement after taking office that rights concerns would not “interfere” with cooperation.
However, Clinton said on Friday that human rights were at “the heart” of US diplomacy, insisting that China, as a founding member of the UN, “has committed to respecting the rights of all its citizens.”
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