[UPDATE: Gao Zhisheng resurfaced in March 2010, contacting the media, friends and family from a Buddhist retreat. He had been released from custody some six months earlier. He undoubtedly remains under police surveillance. He has announced that he is 'retiring' from political advocacy. ]
According to reports, top human rights lawyer and fierce reform advocate Gao Zhisheng has 'disappeared'.
By disappeared, I don't mean 'disappeared from his home'. Local police and state security agents had already 'disappeared' him the more conventional sense, nabbing him while he was visiting family in February 2009.
No, the news is that he disappeared while still in police custody.
Fears are growing for the Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng after his brother said police admitted he "went missing", seven months after being taken into detention.
It is not unusual for persons of high interest or risk to the state to be held for long periods -- even without charges. What is unusual is for the police to then lose them.
I wish it could mean something positive, like that he escaped and is hiding out safely on a tropical island somewhere. But he would have contacted family if he were safe, and his wife and children are now in the US -- he could have joined them there.
Gao Zhisheng was known to be very passionate and outspoken social critic. He's been detained repeatedly over the years, and has been tortured and threatened with death. But he also knew how to work the angle of a high international profile -- he felt he would be safe.
"They threaten to arrest me and I say, 'Go ahead'. I am a warrior who does not care whether I live or die. Such a sacrifice will be nothing to me if it speeds the death of this dictatorship," he said.
This man was a former PLA soldier and former Communist Party Member. He was privileged in society but this also meant he had a responsibility to speak and to act. He knew what he was doing -- or so he thought.
This week his brother told Associated Press that he had received new and disturbing information from one of the policemen who took Gao away. Gao Zhyi said the policeman told him that Gao Zhisheng "lost his way and went missing" on 25 September.
The authorities refuse to comment on the case.
This is extremely odd.
Mo Shaoping, a lawyer who was prevented from representing Gao during an earlier trial, said the situation was abnormal. "If he ran away from a detention centre or died there, the legal responsibility of the authorities is unavoidable. If police told Gao's relative that he is missing, they have an obligation to find him."
I think by 'find' they mean give answer to what has been done. It sounds very much like Gao has died while in custody, although this is not yet confirmed, and whether by illness or execution (which would be extraordinary) has also not yet been confirmed. But the point is: the government must account for him, and give answer to what has happened.
This situation is still developing. My heart goes out to the Gao friends and family, and those he tried to defend and help. And we wait to see what happens...
OK: this is why Google making a principled stand on China matters to me.
Look at this quote from Agence-France Press:
"As the police took [Gao] away, they are completely responsible for his whereabouts. They cannot say that he is missing," Teng Biao, a former colleague and lecturer at the University of Politics and Law in Beijing, told AFP. "His arrest and the way his case has been handled has been completely illegal and has repeatedly violated legal procedure."
Teng Biao realized just yesterday after Google's announcement that his Gmail account has been compromised.
“Google leaving China makes people sad, but accepting censorship to stay in China and abandoning its ‘Don't Be Evil' principles is more than just sad,” Mr. Teng wrote.
Google hadn't told Teng, he figured it out himself. He doesn't know for sure if he is one of the 'compromised' accounts Google referred to.
But by making the fact of insecurity of their data very public, and sending a clear message, Google acted responsibly. I disagree with the those cynically think their announcement was only about bottom line numbers.
The tools of the internet and the principles of speech that guide their use do not exist only for profit, and not only for a bottom line. They are the tools being used by ordinary folks getting recipes and reading news --- but also by people such as these who work hard and sacrifice everything to help shape their country at a critical juncture.
Integrity matters. May we all hope to not do evil.