Activist lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who was held incommunicado for over a year before reappearing to announce he was giving up activism, has again gone missing. From the New York Times:
Associates said Mr. Gao failed to return to a Beijing apartment on April 20 after spending more than a week in Urumqi, the capital of western China’s Xinjiang region, where he had been visiting his father-in-law. Mr. Gao had telephoned his father-in-law as his plane left Urumqi, saying he would call upon his arrival in Beijing, they said.
That was his last contact with the outside world. Li Heping, another Beijing human-rights lawyer and a close friend, said that repeated visits to Mr. Gao’s apartment had been fruitless.
“There was a thick layer of dust on the door handle. No one had been there for a while,” said Mr. Li, who last went to Mr. Gao’s apartment on Thursday. “I have no idea who to call, or who has taken him.”
Others said they were sure that he had been returned to government custody and that his brief release had been a ploy to demonstrate to the outside world that he had not been mistreated while in detention.
Read more about Gao Zhisheng via CDT.
