The wife of a dissident Chinese lawyer missing for more than a year said she was relieved to learn he is alive and appealed yesterday to the government to allow him to leave China and join his family in the US.
Attorney Gao Zhisheng (高智晟) resurfaced suddenly on Sunday, saying he was living in northern China, but it was not clear under what conditions.
Before being jailed and otherwise muzzled four years ago, Gao was the most dauntless of a new group of civil liberties lawyers. He took on sensitive cases involving underground Christians and the banned Falun Gong and advocated constitutional reform.
Since he went missing on Feb. 4 last year from his hometown, the government has given vague explanations about Gao’s whereabouts, heightening worries he had been jailed or tortured as he was previously.
“I am tremendously relieved that my husband is alive,” Gao’s wife, Geng He (耿和), said in a statement issued by Freedom Now, a non-governmental organization that represents prisoners of conscience.
Geng and her two children fled China a month before Gao was detained and now live in the US.
“I am so happy that my children were able to speak to him,” she said. “My children and I have not seen their father since January 2009. We urge the Chinese government to allow Zhisheng to leave the country and be reunited with us in the United States.”
Contacted briefly on Sunday on his cellphone, Gao said he was living in Wutai Shan, a mountain range famous as a Buddhist retreat, and that he was “free at present.”
“I just want to be in peace and quiet for a while and be reunited with my family,” Gao said. “Most people belong with family. I have not been with mine for a long time. This is a mistake and I want to correct this mistake.”
Li Heping (李和平), a Beijing-based human rights lawyer and friend of Gao’s, said he also spoke briefly with Gao and believed Gao was being followed by authorities.
“I believe he does not have freedom,” Li said. “First, when we were speaking, he sounded like he wanted to hang up. He told me that he had friends around him. I’m sure that the people around him are limiting what he can say.”
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