The wife of an activist Chinese lawyer missing for more than a year challenged claims by authorities in China that he was working in a remote western region of the country and had been in touch with relatives, a human rights group said yesterday.
The case of Gao Zhisheng (高智晟), one of China’s most daring lawyers, has drawn international attention for the unusual length of his disappearance and for earlier reports of torture he said he faced from security forces.
Gao, a self-trained lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, took on highly sensitive cases involving the banned Falun Gong spiritual group and advocated constitutional reform.
“For a very long time I have not heard from him, and I do not know where he is now,” Gao’s wife, Geng He (耿和), said in a statement released by the New York-based group Human Rights in China.
Her statement comes after a San Francisco-based human rights group, the Dui Hua Foundation, said last week it was told by the Chinese embassy in Washington that Gao was working in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang region, and had been in touch with his wife and relatives.
Dui Hua did not say what kind of work Gao was allegedly doing or where he was staying. Urumqi is about 2,900km west of Beijing.
“Unless the Chinese government truly makes good on what it is declaring to the outside world and allows my husband to get in contact with me directly, I have no way of verifying his current whereabouts and whether he is safe and free,” Geng said.
Gao’s brother, Gao Zhiyi (高智義), has said he doesn’t know where his brother is and had no luck getting information from Beijing police.
Geng and her two children now live in the US after being accepted as refugees.
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