Gao Zhisheng

On 16 December 2011, the Chinese official state news agency Xinhua reported that human rights defender and lawyer Mr Gao Zhisheng had had his probation revoked and had been sent back to jail to serve a three-year prison sentence.

Gao Zhisheng, currently subject of a long-term Front Line campaign, has been missing for the past 20 months. He has not been seen publicly since April 2010.

According to the brief report carried by Xinhua, the Beijing First Intermediate People's Court issued a statement saying that Gao Zhisheng's probation had been withdrawn because he had 'seriously violated probation rules'. The report stated that Gao Zhisheng had been ordered to serve the three-year sentence for 'inciting subversion of state power' originally handed down on 22 December 2006 but which had been suspended for five years. His five-year probation was due to come to an end within days of the court ruling. The report did not specify which probation rules Gao Zhisheng is said to have violated.

Gao Zhisheng is a human rights lawyer who regularly took on cases involving persecution of religious minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners and those associated with the unofficial 'house church' movement. For this, and other human rights defence work, Gao Zhisheng has been forcibly disappeared a number of times, and according to media interviews he subsequently gave, brutally tortured.

In February 2009 while ostensibly free on probation, Gao Zhisheng was taken from a relative's home and was not heard from again until March 2010, when he briefly resurfaced. He disappeared again in late April 2010, and up to 16 December 2011 no information had been provided about his whereabouts. His whereabouts remain unknown as it was not revealed in which prison Gao Zhisheng is being, or will be, held. In March 2011 the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention stated that Gao Zhisheng's continued disappearance was in violation of international law.

Front Line strongly condemns the ongoing treatment of Gao Zhisheng. Given the lack of information provided about his situation and noting reports of the torture that Gao Zhisheng alleges he was previously subjected to while disappeared, Front Line is gravely concerned for his physical and psychological integrity.

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