One of the foremost attorneys in China, Gao Zisheng believed in the rule of law, and began to try to use the law to protect human rights. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) describes what happened next:
He wrote an open letter to the United States Congress asking us to pay some attention to the lack of human rights that existed in China. For writing an open letter to members of the United States Congress in 2007, Gao Zhisheng, one of the most distinguished human rights — noted and distinguished human rights lawyers in China, was imprisoned for 58 days and brutally tortured.
. . . Mr. Gao Zhisheng has represented some of the most vulnerable people in China. They include persecuted Christians, coal miners and others. He always believed in the power of law; using the law to battle corruption, to overturn illegal property seizures, to expose police abuses, to defend religious freedom. He’s a devout Christian. He fought to protect those who engage in peaceful spiritual and religious practice in China.
And in 2005, they took away his license to practice law, closed his law practice. As I said, in 2007, they arrested him, threw him in prison and tortured him. Eventually he was released and brought back home and placed under police surveillance at home. The surveillance proved almost harsher than prison. In fact, a member of the communist police moved into their living room, prevented his daughter from going to school; his 16-year-old daughter barred from attending schools. 24-hour surveillance.
One year ago, on February 4, 2009, Gao Zisheng was again seized by the Chinese government. No one except his Chinese captors knew whether he was dead or alive. Finally, after continuing international pressure from citizens and free governments, the Chinese apparently leaked word in January to an Australian newspaper that he is still alive.
Those readers who know their English legal history know the stories of the great lawyers during the Tudor and Stuart reigns, who used the law to challenge the abuses of the monarchs. Those readers know the debt that every free American owes to those lawyers, who sacrificed so much–and sometimes their lives–to establish the rule of law. During the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts, the friends of a courageous lawyer who had been unlawfully imprisoned could resort to the Great Writ, the writ of habeas corpus, to secure a judicial hearing on his detention under the law.
There is no writ of habeas corpus in China, nor are there most of the other civil rights guarantees which are characteristic of a civilized nation with a free government. And so Gao Zisheng’s writ of habeas corpus will not be issued by a Chinese court, but its moral equivalent can be issued by the free people of the world: commanding that the body of Gao Zisheng, in the Chinese government’s custody detained, as it is said, together with the day and cause of his caption and detention, be safely brought forth. If you would like to sign a petition to free Gao Zisheng, or contact your elected officials to urge them to press for his freedom, or take other steps, click here.
Cornellian says:
I’m sure the Chinese government will say they simply used enhanced interrogation techniques, not torture.
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February 4, 2010, 2:38 amA. Zarkov says:
If you would like to sign a petition to free Gao Zisheng, or contact your elected officials to urge them to press for his freedom, or take other steps, click here.
Are you kidding? My elected official has sold his soul to Chinese like the rest of Congress. We are in hock to the Chinese for nearly a trillion dollars. Where are my elected officials going to get the money to finance, their trillions of dollars of overspending?
I can’t get my Congressman’s staff to tell me his position two hours before a bill comes up for a vote. All I get is “I don’t know.” I get the same answer to every question I have ever posed. He just doesn’t care what his constituents think. He gets his marching orders from Pelosi.
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February 4, 2010, 4:33 amSarcastro says:
Way to see the big picture, A. Zarkov!
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February 4, 2010, 6:41 amJPG says:
Well done, Mr Kopel. Should people become more informed on this issue, the greater would be the chances our political leaders will find as politically reasonable to take action on this issue as it is politically appealing for them to take position on Tibet, for instance.
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February 4, 2010, 7:06 amJoe T. Guest says:
JPG — actually, it isn’t politically appealing for them to take a position on Tibet any more. The Chinese punish politicians who do. That’s why our president, declined to meet with the Dalai Lama. Who, by the way, is a big hitter...
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February 4, 2010, 7:44 amJDH says:
Another reason why I’ll never step foot in or encourage others to visit China. I may not be able to avoid their economic impact, but I can avoid tourism. Until reformers get SEVERAL people on their side who are high up in the Politburo and the freedom of the press, they will always be subject to the petty whims of tyranny and dictatorship.
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February 4, 2010, 8:04 amWidmerpool says:
I await the Chinese government’s official announcement that he died of a heart attack while incarcerated. Or wait, maybe he was shot while trying to escape.
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February 4, 2010, 9:09 amEconGrad says:
It’s funny how we (the United States) can be so two faced when dealing with nations. If a country whom we need nothing from treated its citizens the way China does, we’d at a minimum refuse to do any business with them, and might even try to help overthrow their government by force if it suited our purposes. But China isn’t some “country whom we need nothing from”. We like borrowing money from them, and we like the cheap products they produce — so we (our political leaders) say and do nothing and look the other way.
Of course I’m just pointing out the two-faced nature of it all. Personally I don’t think that it’s really any of our business (officially speaking — if private individuals want to exert pressure because they feel it is the morally right thing to do, that’s cool). If the people of China don’t like the evil government they have, they should overthrow it. Sure they aren’t allowed private ownership of arms (oops, big mistake there), but they have more bodies to throw at the problem than any other country on Earth. With that many people in the pool of potential troublemakers, even poorly armed (molotov cocktails, random stabbings of government officials, etc.) they could do a lot of monkey wrenching. They are either happy with the current state of affairs, or not unhappy enough to upset the apple cart. Their decision.
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February 4, 2010, 9:38 amPer Son says:
Reminds me of the end of Cry Freedom where it lists a whole bunch of folks who died while imprisoned by the SA Apartheid Regime. You know people who “committed suicide” by throwing themselves down stairs.
Thank you Mr. Kopel for this post. I spent several years hating every post you made, but you are slowly converting me. lol
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February 4, 2010, 9:54 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
I was thinking about South Africa also. And as EconGrad says, countries where horrible things happen but we don’t need anything from them.
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February 4, 2010, 12:18 pmArthurKirkland says:
I don’t like this type of behavior when any country engages in it. It is disappointing that the world’s most powerful nations, which need not stoop so readily, are unable to resist debasing themselves in this manner.
I started to avoid products from China years ago, and stopped knowingly buying Chinese food (food from China, not hot and sour soup) a year or two ago, when the quality issues became impossible to ignore.
China and Saudi Arabia are the two countries Americans will most regret their voluntary relationships with (which, after developments in Iraq, is saying one hell of a lot). I do not take credit for that statement. A former president said it, just before saying that Chinese and Saudi relationships with powerful American interests would prevent any meaningful change in course, barring a catastrophe.
The differences between our approaches to China and Cuba are a vivid indictment of the way the United States government interacts with other nations.
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February 4, 2010, 1:37 pmJPG says:
I respectfully disagree. While there are quite some negative consequences towards Beijing to greet the Dalai-lama, Western leaders do so because they know it is a sexy political stand to choose, given the overwhelming popular sympathy felt for Tibet. It may not be a wise diplomatic move, but it pays, politically speaking, to gain popular support.
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February 4, 2010, 1:54 pmq says:
Our relationship with China (can’t disagree about Saudi Arabia) has pushed hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. I guess that’s not meaningful enough?
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February 4, 2010, 3:07 pmArthurKirkland says:
I perceive some miscommunication.
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February 4, 2010, 5:49 pmNunzio says:
Let’s just stiff the Chinese on the $2 trillion we owe them.
We own them more than they own us.
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February 4, 2010, 5:54 pmRandy says:
Perhaps it would be nice to be able to exert some control over the Chinese to avoid human rights abuses. But nothing has teeth in it unless we had some sort of uber-governmental entity or court system. But every time that is raised, it’s opposed by people who are afraid of black helicopters and the ‘one world gov’t’ conspiracy freaks.
So we are left with only moral persuasion, which isn’t much after our official policy of rendition and torture.
So I guess we are left with just people here and there doing impromptu boycotts of Chinese made clothes and computer parts, and perhaps a sternly worded letter (in English) to the Communist party. Not at all effective, evidently.
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February 4, 2010, 6:12 pmvc addict says:
I’d consider myself to be someone who knows at least a bit about China: I gained fluency in Mandarin by living in Beijing for an extended period of time.
The Chinese government is the most despicable regime currently in power. I’d rate it worse than what’s in Burma, parts of Africa, Iran, and North Korea. The CCP has consummate power over the lives of over one billion people–and the PRC’s aggressively dishonest foreign policy has a huge and pernicious effect on global politics (I’d be more than happy to list examples, but that would be getting away from the point of this thread, not to mention that it would be a hell of a long post). North Korea postures, but it isn’t nearly as powerful or as threatening as China. Bizarre Confucian power relationships make political rebellions practically unthinkable, and the PRC’s current government isn’t going anywhere. Democracy in general is of the least interest to many Chinese, and this is why Tiananmen Square won’t happen again anytime soon. (Chinese students, when I asked about it, invariably laughed nervously and said it was “very interesting”.)
Good luck to Gao Zhisheng. He’s either rotting away in a 勞改 (laogai) prison camp (yes, present-day China has a massive Gulag system that the Western media never reports on) or has had his organs harvested and is a cold body at this point.
Grim, but true. And before anyone gets mad, let me stress that these comments are limited to CCP officials only and do not reflect my attitude about the majority of Chinese people in any way.
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February 4, 2010, 6:54 pmNorthern Dave says:
My two cents since I didn’t notice anyone point it out:
This is why we need to fight to keep habeas corpus in our own Western Laws. It is vitally important to the defense against tyranny.
Thanks for the info David.
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February 4, 2010, 7:05 pmTokyoTom says:
Dave, I’ve tweeted this post, with the hashmarks #Gao #Zisheng and #habeas Maybe others will do the same?
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February 4, 2010, 8:33 pmDave Kopel’s Second Amendment Newsletter | The American Jingoist says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy February 4, 2010 http://volokh.com/2010/02/04/where-is-gao-zisheng/ [...]