美联社独家报导：失踪的中国律师谈及虐待
Charles Hutzler
美联社
星期一，2011年1月10日; 6:21am
北京 – 警察剥光高智晟，用套在皮套里的枪干殴打他。两天两夜里，他们轮流殴打
他，并对他做了难以言述的事情。当所有三个人员累了，他们用塑料袋绑住他的胳
膊和腿，把他扔到地上，直到他们呼吸平缓后，又继续开始虐待。
“这种残酷的程度，没有办法叙述。”这个人权律师说，他一向威严的声音颤抖着。
“那48小时里我的命悬线上。”
这些殴打是直到三月份的14个月以来最糟糕的经历和最黑暗的一幕。在此期间，中
国当局秘密关押着高智晟。他在四月向美联社描述了他的苦难，但要求他的讲话不
要公开，除非他失踪了，或去到“安全”的地方如美国或欧洲。
两个星期后，他又消失了。他的家人和朋友说，八个多月没有听到他的消息了。公
安部门或拒绝发表评论、或说他们不知道高智晟的下落。基于这次失踪的长度，美
联社决定公开这段讲话。
高智晟一直是人权运动的关键人物，提倡宪法改革和讨论具有里程碑意义的案件，
保护财产权利、以及政治和宗教异见人士，包括法轮功精神运动。他的2009年失踪
掀起了国际抗议，可能促使他去年得到短暂的释放。
在民主和人权活动家中，显然只挑了高智晟进行这么多次酷刑，超出了中国纤弱的
法律所保护的。
“这似乎是说，他们害怕高智晟的某些方面，是别人所不具备的”马兰特纳，“现
在自由”的执行主任，这是个位于华盛顿的一个组织，它为政治犯们说话，高智晟
是其中一个。
高智晟的妻子、兄弟、和朋友都担心他的安全。他们希望公开这段讲话会重新给政
府压力透露高智晟的下落，并请关注刘晓波的国际社会转变焦点。刘晓波是监禁期
间获得诺贝尔和平奖的异议作家。
“我们一直没有他的消息”他的妻子耿和，在上周旧金山地区接受电话采访，在那
里她和子女同住的。 “这可以帮助我们得到一些他的消息，带来自由。”
高智晟是在一个几乎空了的北京茶馆和美联社记者交谈的，茶馆外有便衣警察看守。
不像以往的强有力，他看起来很疲惫。他说，那14个月警察曾经把他藏在旅馆、农
屋、公寓、和监狱，地点分布在北京、他的家乡陕西、以及他生活了好多年的新疆
西部。
闲了几个星期又被残暴所打断。他被蒙头几次。他的绑架者用皮带把他绑上，让他
16个小时一动不动，跟他说他的孩子们患上精神崩溃了。他们威胁要弄死他，并把
他的尸体扔到河里。
“’你得忘了你自己是个人类。你是个动物。”，高智晟说2009年9月折磨他的警察
这么告诉他。
这即使对中国常施虐的警察也是过了头了，对高智晟的待遇突显了这个独裁政府的
意愿：违反自己的法律来压制批评。
高智晟曾因越来越多的公开活动在2006年以颠覆罪名被判入狱。但是，与大多数被
定罪的颠覆分子不一样，高智晟被释放，并得到三年缓刑。不断被监视着，他与骚
扰他和家人的警察发生口角。他的妻子和两个孩子逃出中国，偷渡头子通过陆路把
她们送到东南亚。
高智晟去年4月说，警察似乎随心情就把他投入地狱。
高智晟有一次问北京警察：“为什么你们不把我关在监狱里？”“他们说，「你想
进监狱，做梦。你还没好到那个程度。现在只要我们想让你失踪，你就失踪。」”
负责监督警察部队的公安部并没有回应查询高智晟的电话和传真。而高智晟所说被
关押的北京、陕西、和新疆等地的警察他被关押 – 拒绝评论他目前的状况，以及他
之前的遭遇。
“我们没有处理高智晟案件，我们不知道是谁处理的。据我们所知，他的确留在新
疆探访问了他的亲戚一阵子。”新疆公安厅信息办公室的李女士说。
高智晟向他几个熟悉的朋友描述了他失踪的片段，他们证实了高智晟向美联社说的
部分。但高智晟和他的支持者的说法中也有分歧。
2009-10年度失踪期间，高智晟的家人和人权团体说他的下落不明。但是，高智晟在四月份采访时说，他有过几个机会接触亲戚：2009年六月到他哥家附近探访他哥；几个星期后在新疆首都乌鲁木齐岳母家探望他岳母；后来又和他的妻子有一个秘密电话交谈。她说是通过一个警察的手机。
高智晟告诉美联社说，他希望能与家人团聚，甚至出国，但几天后拒绝了美国外交
官的帮助。
“现在自由”的特纳说，独裁政权下的政治犯所说的话常常不一致，以保护自己、
家人、或其他人。
高智晟说，2009年2月，警方首先把他从北京带到榆林，一个他长大的黄土贫瘠山区。几周之内，警方用车把他带回北京，用两条内衣包住他的头。在那里，他说他被关在一个24小时开灯的房间，它的窗口用木板钉上，并喂他吃腐烂的脏白菜，一天两次。
4月28日，他说，六名便衣人员用皮带绑起他，用湿毛巾把他的脸包上一个小时，让
他缓慢感觉窒息。
两个月后，他被送回榆林，然后到新疆的首府乌鲁木齐，在那里他的待遇改善了。
他说，偶尔会让他晚上散步，警察在后面尾随。那几个月他被关押在乌鲁木齐市郊
区的野马公寓楼区。
在他失踪的2009-10期间，最残酷的时期是在一次9月25日的步行开始。一群维吾尔人(这大部份是穆斯林少数民族)，走近他并打他肚子。他们给他戴上手铐，胶带封上上他的嘴巴和眼睛，把他带到一个建筑物的楼上房间里，开始了一个星期的虐待，其高峰就是48小时的枪干鞭打和其他的虐待。
那年夏天早些时候，维吾尔和大汉族社区之间爆发暴力冲突，城市很紧张。但是高
智晟说，他知道那些行凶者是便衣警察。他说：“土匪绝不会使用手铐。”
抓他的人告诉他，他们是一个反恐成员单位的人，并炫耀他们严酷的审讯手法。
高智晟说，这次酷刑比上次2007年失踪时还要严重，那次国安电击他的生殖器，并
在他眼睛附近举着点燃的香烟导致他短暂失明。
高智晟说，他后来得知他是在新疆公安部门拘留中心。他的警卫告诉他，他是和七
月份社区暴乱的嫌疑犯关在一起。
“我说，「所有的人，罪犯应受保护他们的权利。」他们把我弯过去，迫使我的头
90度鞠躬站立。这是很疼痛苦的”，高智晟说。
2009年11月美国总统奥巴马到北京会议后情况得到改善。高智晟说，警方把他送回
榆林，但却是一个接近沙漠的隔离区。他们施加压力，逼他写了一封信，要求他的
哥哥停止前往北京要求释放他。
一组来自北京的十名官员在2010年2月下旬抵达，和高智晟进行谈判，以得到有限的自由。
“他们说，如果我想看到我的家人和妻子，我必须配合表演”，高智晟说。
高智晟被带到五台山，一个佛教避暑地，警察告诉他的家人，他到那儿去寻求平静。这个解释被散播了。警察把高智晟的手机号码放在推特上。但这太不像健谈、好辨的高智晟了，它引发了关于释放他所达成交易的猜测。不久，他回到北京。
高智晟只在采访中提到妥协：“其实，即使在今天我也没得到我的自由。”
他对支持者可能的失望表示歉意，因为他不会再站在人权运动的最前线了。他还暗
示了他的内心冲突。
“人类走向宪政的路是没有任何障碍可以阻挡的”，高智晟说。“在中国，我从来
没有看到风险。我的个性是不会让其他人控制的。我想继续。”
美联社摄影师 Isolda Morillo 合作完成此报导。
（美联社）
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原文:
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AP Exclusive: Missing Chinese lawyer told of abuse
By CHARLES HUTZLER
The Associated Press
Monday, January 10, 2011; 6:21 AM
BEIJING — The police stripped Gao Zhisheng bare and pummeled him with handguns in holsters. For two days and nights, they took turns beating him and did things he refused to describe. When all three officers tired, they bound his arms and legs with plastic bags and threw him to the floor until they caught their breath to resume the abuse.
“That degree of cruelty, there’s no way to recount it,” the civil rights lawyer said, his normally commanding voice quavering. “For 48 hours my life hung by a thread.”
The beatings were the worst he said he ever endured and the darkest point of 14 months, ending last March, during which Gao was secretly held by Chinese authorities. He described his ordeal to The Associated Press that April, but asked that his account not be made public unless he went missing again or made it to “someplace safe” like the United States or Europe.
Two weeks later, he disappeared again. His family and friends say they have not heard from him in the more than eight months since. Police agencies either declined to comment or said they did not know Gao’s whereabouts. The AP decided to publish his account given the length of his current disappearance.
Gao had been a galvanizing figure for the rights movement, advocating constitutional reform and arguing landmark cases to defend property rights and political and religious dissenters, including members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. His disappearance in 2009 set off an international outcry that may have played a role in winning his brief release last year.
Among democracy and rights campaigners, Gao appears to have been singled out for frequent, harsh punishment beyond the slim protections of China’s laws.
“It seems to be that they are afraid of Gao in a way they aren’t of others,” Maran Turner, the executive director of Freedom Now, a Washington-based group that advocates for political prisoners, Gao among them.
Gao’s wife, brother and friends fear for his safety. They hope publicizing his account will place renewed pressure on the government to disclose Gao’s whereabouts and refocus international attention diverted to Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned dissident writer awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
“We’ve had no word of him all this time,” his wife, Geng He, said last week in a telephone interview from the San Francisco area, where she and their children live. “This could help us get some news of him and gain his freedom.”
Gao spoke to the AP in a nearly empty Beijing teahouse watched outside by plainclothes police. Weary-looking rather than his normally forceful self, he said that over those 14 months police had stashed him in hostels, farm houses, apartments and prisons in Beijing, his native province of Shaanxi and the far western region of Xinjiang, where he lived for many years.
Weeks of inactivity were punctuated by outbursts of brutality. He was hooded several times. His captors tied him up with belts, made him sit motionless for up to 16 hours and told him his children were having nervous breakdowns. They threatened to kill him and dump his body in a river.
“‘You must forget you’re human. You’re a beast,'” Gao said his police tormentors told him in September 2009.
Excessive even for China’s often abusive police, the treatment given to Gao highlights the authoritarian government’s willingness to breach its own laws to silence critics.
Gao had been jailed on subversion charges in 2006 for his increasingly public activism. But unlike most convicted subversives, Gao was released, his three-year sentence suspended. Watched constantly, he had run-ins with police who harassed him and his family. His wife and two children fled China, escorted by human traffickers overland to Southeast Asia.
Gao in April said that police seemed intent on casting him into a limbo that kept him at their whim.
“Why don’t you put me in prison?” Gao said he asked Beijing police at one point. “They said, ‘You going to prison, that’s a dream. You’re not good enough for that. Whenever we want you to disappear, you will disappear.'”
The Public Security Ministry, which oversees police forces, did not respond to telephoned and faxed inquiries about Gao. Police in Beijing, Shaanxi and Xinjiang – locations where Gao said he was held – declined comment on his current predicament as well as his past treatment.
“We didn’t handle the case of Gao Zhisheng and we don’t know who did. As far as we know, he did stay in Xinjiang to visit his relatives for a period of time,” said a Ms. Li from the information office of the Xinjiang Public Security Department.
Gao described snippets of his disappearance to close friends who corroborated parts of the account he gave the AP. But there are also discrepancies in accounts among Gao and his supporters.
During his 2009-10 disappearance, Gao’s family and human rights groups said his whereabouts were unknown. But Gao said in the April interview that he had a few moments of contact with relatives: a 90-minute visit with his older brother near their family home in June 2009; a visit with his mother-in-law at his in-laws’ in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, a few weeks later; and later a furtive phone conversation with his wife that she said was via a policeman’s mobile phone.
Gao told the AP that he wanted to be reunited with his family and would even go abroad, but rejected a U.S. diplomat who offered to help days later.
Turner of Freedom Now said accounts by political prisoners under authoritarian regimes often contain inconsistencies, frequently to protect themselves, family or others.
Gao said that in February 2009, police first spirited Gao from Beijing to Yulin, a poor area of barren yellow hills where he grew up. Within weeks, police brought him back to Beijing by car, covering his head with a pair of underwear. There, he said he was kept in a room with lights on 24 hours a day, its windows boarded up, and fed rotten, dirty cabbage twice a day.
On April 28, he said, six plainclothes officers bound him with belts and put a wet towel around his face for an hour, bringing on a feeling of slow suffocation.
Two months later, he was sent back to Yulin and then on to Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, where his treatment improved. He said he was occasionally allowed evening strolls, police escorts trailing behind, during the several months he was kept in the Wild Horse apartment block on Urumqi’s outskirts.
The most brutal period of Gao’s 2009-10 disappearance began with a Sept. 25 walk. A group of Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority group, approached him and punched him in the stomach. They handcuffed him, taped his mouth and eyes shut and took him into the upstairs room of a building, beginning a week of mistreatment that culminated with the 48 hours of pistol-whipping and other abuse.
Earlier that summer, communal violence erupted between Uighurs and members of the Han Chinese majority, and the city was tense. But Gao said he knew his assailants were plainclothes police. “Bandits would never use handcuffs,” he said.
His captors told him they were members of a counterterrorism unit and boasted about their harsh interrogation methods.
Gao said the torture was worse than a previous disappearance in 2007, when security forces gave him electric shocks to his genitals and held burning cigarettes close to his eyes to cause temporary blindness.
Gao said he learned later that he was being held in Xinjiang’s Public Security Department detention center. His guards told him he was being held with suspects from the deadly July communal riots.
“I said, ‘All people, criminals should have their rights protected.’ They bent me over, forcing my head to bow 90 degrees while standing. It was painful,” Gao said.
Conditions improved after U.S. President Barack Obama’s Beijing summit in November 2009. Police, Gao said, sent him back to Yulin, but to an isolated area near the desert. They pressured him to write a letter asking his brother to stop traveling to Beijing to seek his release.
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A group of 10 officials from Beijing arrived late in February 2010 to negotiate with Gao terms for his limited freedom.
“They said that if I wanted to see my family and wife, I must play along in a performance,” Gao said.
Gao was taken to Mount Wutai, a Buddhist retreat, and police told his family that he went there to seek peace. The explanation spread – police put Gao’s mobile number on Twitter – but it seemed so out of character for the talkative, argumentative Gao that it triggered speculation about the bargains struck for his release. Soon he returned to Beijing.
Gao only alluded to compromises in the interview: “In reality, even today I have not gained my freedom.”
He apologized for the disappointment he said he was likely to cause supporters by no longer being at the forefront of the rights movement. He also hinted at inner conflicts.
“Mankind’s path to constitutional government is one that no obstruction can stop,” Gao said. “In China, I never see the risks. My character is one that is unwilling to be controlled by other people. I want to go on.”
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Associated Press videographer Isolda Morillo contributed to this report.
