Gao Zhisheng
来自China Digital Space
高智晟
People across this country are awakening to their rights and seizing on the promise of the law. But you cannot be a rights lawyer in this country without becoming a rights case yourself.
—Gao Zhisheng, 2005
Born in 1964, Gao Zhisheng is a human rights lawyer, activist, and author. His work defending rights activists and documenting rights abuse in China has led to his multiple detentions, disbarment, imprisonment, and house arrest. In August of 2017, Gao disappeared from house arrest in Shaanxi, and his current whereabouts are unknown.
Gao Zhisheng was born in Jia County, Yulin, Shaanxi on April 20, 1964. His father passed away in 1975, leaving Gao and his six siblings with his mother. His family didn't have enough money to send him to primary school, but he reportedly sat outside a school window to listen to classes. He attended junior high school with the financial help of an uncle, and joined the People's Liberation Army in 1985. Stationed in Kashgar, Xinjiang, he got his high school diploma and became a Party member. In 1991 he married his wife Geng He (耿和).
After seeing Deng Xiaoping's call to train 150,000 lawyers to develop the rule of law in China in 1991 in an old official newspaper, he saved enough money to enroll in a self-taught law course and passed the national legal exam in 1995. He went on to practice in Xinjiang, winning several high-profile cases, including a national headline-worthy $100,000 in compensation in a medical malpractice case. In 2000 he moved to Beijing and established the Zhi Sheng law firm.
In 2001, China's Ministry of Justice named Gao one of the top ten lawyers in China for his work representing victims of medical malpractice and fighting for compensation for dispossessed landowners. In 2005, authorities ordered the closure of Gao's firm after he refused to stand down from representing sensitive clients including Falun Gong practitioners and defendants from Taishi Village, Guangdong after political unrest in the region. He resigned his Party membership that same year. An open letter to Chinese representative at the Congress on the Law of the World signed by Gao, fellow rights lawyer Teng Biao, and rights activist Xu Zhiyong on September 8 2005 called out officials' inaction on rights issues while claiming to be devoted to the rule of law, listing several recent examples. Gao and his family began to be subjects of round-the-clock police surveillance, but Gao continued his work documenting rights abuses.
In August 2006, Gao disappeared, and was formally arrested in September for "inciting subversion". His three year prison sentence was commuted to five years probation, including the stripping of his political rights—including his ability to publish or speak publicly about the government—for a year. Following that one-year period, he was detained for several weeks after sending an open letter to U.S. congress
Gao Zhisheng at CDT
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