Where is Gao Zhisheng? The Missing Chinese Human Rights Activist (fr. Bob Fu)
Bill Saunders: Hello, everyone. This is William Saunders. I’m the director of the center for Human Rights at Catholic University of America. This is another edition of the Barefoot Lawyer reports and I’m here as always, with our distinguished fellow Chen Guangcheng.
Guangcheng Chen: Hello, my friend.
Bill Saunders: And also we’re here with Bob Fu, who is the president of China Aid. And we’re here in Washington D.C, and Bob has come to Washington for an event that he’s doing tomorrow at the Victims of Communist memorial. And Guangcheng is part of that event, so Bob, why don’t you tell us a little bit about it? Why are you here?
Bob Fu: Thank you, Dr. Saunders, for having me again with Guangcheng.
It involved a mutual friend of mine and Guangcheng, a courageous Chinese human rights lawyer: Gao Zhisheng. He was suffering for over ten years from constant kidnapping, imprisonment, torture, as actually Guangcheng suffered before he came to the U.S.
And he was the first one really, I think in Chinese legal professionals, by challenging the Communist Party’s suppression of one of the most persecuted religious groups, the Falun Gong group. After 1999, when Jiang Zemin and the communist regime passed that anti evil cult law and deemed the Falun Gong group as an evil cult. The Falun Gong, as a belief was totally forbidden even for individuals. I’m a Christian pastor, a Christian believer. As much persecution as the Christian churches had experienced, at least the communist party had some official churches called a “three self patriotic movement.” As long as you are dedicated and loyal to the communist party, you are allowed to exist.
So the Falun Gong as a faith is not even allowed to exist, since 1999. No prosecutors are even allowed to accept a case despite hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners being arbitrarily arrested and tortured, and thousands of deaths being documented. Our friend Gao Zhisheng, a legal professional, wrote a letter first challenging that, after documenting this horrific kind of religious persecution. He also stood up for the persecuted and imprisoned Christian pastors like my friend, my co-worker in Beijing, in our house church, Pastor Caizhao Hua who later on was sentenced to five years imprisonment. Gao Zhisheng was also one of the defending lawyers of his. And just because of that he had to suffer all this for more than 13 years. And of course after the international campaign he was freed just for a couple years. Then he was missing yet again, a forced disappearance. This year marked the fifth year. And basically last month, the month of August marked the five years of enforced disappearance and nobody knows where he is, if he’s dead or alive, or his condition. We rescued his wife, Mrs. Gong He, and their two children in 2009 after they were rescued to Bangkok in Thailand. The family had never seen or met with lawyer Gao Zhisheng. It’s a really very heartbreaking situation.
Bill Saunders: So no word from him, he’s just disappeared?
Bob Fu: Disappeared. Yeah. At the same time the toll, the price the family has been paying is so heavy. during these five years of forced disappearance time, at least two family members, on both Mr. Gao’s side and his wife’s side committed suicide under tremendous distress and threats. One jumped into the river, one jumped from a building. What a heavy human life toll. We ought to stand up for this family, for lawyer Gao Zhisheng. He’s also known as the conscience of China.
This time we decided to host this five year anniversary and host an international press conference with the Victims of Communism memorial together. And some members of Congress will be there. And Mr. Gao’s wife, Mrs. Gong He will be there too. There will also be a portrait of Gao Zhisheng that is going to be astonishing.
Bill Saunders: Yes. So Guangcheng, would you like to say something about Gao?
Guangcheng Chen: Yeah, I can talk a little more. In 2005, the Communist party started to prosecute us. I remember that in September, the Communist party kidnapped me from Beijing and took me back to Shandong and put me under house arrest. Another person is Guo Feixiong. They kidnapped him and sent him to Guangdong province, then put him under house arrest. Then the Communist party ordered more than ten cars of special police to follow Gao Zhisheng in Beijing at the same time.
Bob Fu: And Gao Zhisheng also tried to visit. He’s one of the friends who tried to visit Dongshigu village and almost got his car flipped.
Bill Saunders: I saw the picture. Yeah, the car was flipped over.
Bob Fu: Yeah.
Guangcheng Chen: Yeah. That was 2006. Gao Zhisheng drove a car with his friends and came to my hometown to try to support me. The Communist party, of course, ordered a lot of thugs, took off their clothes and beat them a lot, and stole their money and their devices–their phones, iPads, etc. Yeah. anything the God wants, they can take away.
Bill Saunders: Gao Zhisheng is a great human rights lawyer and is known in China. And so the communist party has now disappeared him. As Guangcheng calls it. He may be in a black jail, and nobody can get any information, unlike when Guangcheng went under house arrest, we were able to get some information about what was going on, but we don’t know anything about what’s happening with Gao. So this event at the Victims of Communism is to raise this issue and the profile of this issue in the press, right?
Guangcheng Chen: Yeah. They kidnapped him for more than five years and 37 days. And, you know, before 2009, the Communist party kidnapped him and put him in the military building, in the basement. Tortured him for more than 21 months. And now it happened, I don’t know if it’s the third time or the fifth time. But this time, it was horrible. No one knows where he is. No one knows if he’s still alive or dead.
Bill Saunders: Is the U.S. putting pressure on China about him?
Guangcheng Chen: I think it’s not enough. His wife came to Washington D.C. several times to ask the U.S. government to help her to find her husband. I think the U.S. can do a lot, but for me I think they did not do enough, only a little. I hope the Biden administration stands up for human rights. If the Communist party continues to prosecute human rights, we should find a way to punish them.
Bill Saunders: Punish the CCP?
Guangcheng Chen: Yeah. Not just appeasement, right? Appeasement can’t resolve the problem.
Bob Fu: Yeah. I mean for those listeners who are not familiar with the Gao Zhisheng story, we also smuggled out his manuscripts, after he was released from the first imprisonment and torture. And that was another miracle. Got out his manuscript, under strict house arrest. We worked with the American Bar Association, EBA, and published the english version called Unwavering Convictions: Gao Zhisheng’s ten year torture and faith in China’s future. It’s in English on Amazon. So people can also read that book and know who he is. I remember after that time he was released, I had a number of hours of conversation over the phone with him. He’s a man of faith. He told me how he knew God was astonishing. He said the most vivid time that he knew God loved him, and His presence, was evident during the most notorious torture. He was stripped naked and a few interrogators used high volume voltage, electric shock batons.
Bill Saunders: Yeah.
Bob Fu: Torturing him all over his body, including his private parts. He said at that time he prayed to God. He said, “Help me and shield me,” and a miracle happened. He said at that time he could smell the burning of his skin. But all of a sudden he said he did not feel any pain.
Bill Saunders: Wow.
Bob Fu: He said God must have a shield around him, to the point where he fell asleep and was snoring.
Bill Saunders: Wow.
Bob Fu: He said those torturers were so angry at him, can you imagine? They were using an electric shock baton, torturing you and you were snoring at them. They poured cold water and woke him up, saying, “We are so exhausted, wet with sweat, and you’re snoring.” He told them, “The reason I fell asleep at peace was because the One who is inside me is much more powerful, much bigger than you guys.”
Guangcheng Chen: Yeah, I think Bob Fu should describe more about the torture to let the listener understand how evil the Communist party is. That is very important, that happens every moment now.
Bob Fu: I mean, you would think these human rights lawyers, like Gao Zhisheng, like Chen Guangcheng, they are the best citizens for Chinese society, right? I mean, they’re not even calling for revolution or even overthrowing the communist party. At the time, they were basically trying to follow the Chinese Communist Party’s own law to make the Communist Party obey their own laws and constitutions. And yet they were treated as enemies of the state. And being tortured really now is so prevalent everywhere, it’s the way they’re treating these dissidents.
Bill Saunders: Yeah, I was talking to Guangcheng a little bit before, and we were talking about the things they’re doing now to keep human rights defenders from interfering with the party congress and stuff that’s coming up. And we’ve talked in previous podcasts, and I recommend the listeners to go on our webpage and listen to some of the past podcasts about all the things they’re doing after Covid, and using excuses of health to give you a score on your health. And you can be green or yellow or red, and unless you’re green, you can’t travel. So one way they control human rights defenders is they just give them a yellow score and they can’t buy bus tickets, and they can’t buy train tickets.
Bob Fu: Oh, I mean, one lawyer just happened to travel to Shanghai to defend another dissident, and as soon as he stepped out of the train at this station square, because his color turned to yellow–I mean, according to this health dictatorship, really health tyranny, right? I mean, immediately people treat him like he’s poisonous, I mean, in the past, it took some public security officers to get there, and now you instantly become the poison of the society. So everyone is supposed to capture you and throw you into a quarantine room. That’s how they’re treating the Chinese citizens now.
Bill Saunders: Gao and Guangcheng were among those who tried to make the Chinese Communist Party follow the rule of law. And for people listening, the basic thing for a just society is you follow the rule of law, which means the powerful have to follow the rules that the powerless have to follow. But the Chinese communist party has gotten worse and worse, and now it’s even worse than it was.
Bob Fu: Absolutely.
Bill Saunders: And Gao has disappeared. And so, this event, at the Victims of Communism memorial, is about him, and it’s about what has happened to China, which has descended even further into a totalitarian state.
Bob Fu: Absolutely.
Bill Saunders: Where citizens have lost even more freedom and there’s no rule of law.
Bob Fu: No rule of law.
Bill Saunders: And it’s just arbitrary power. So it’s very important for people to understand this man is very important because he’s a human being, but he’s also very important because he shows clearly what’s happening in China. And as Guangcheng says over and over, we have to stand up to the CCP. If we don’t stand up to the CCP, they just become worse and worse. And you have to be willing to confront them.
Do you want to say anything about that?
Guangcheng Chen: Yeah, don’t think the Communist party is very far away.
Bill Saunders: Don’t think it’s very far away.
Guangcheng Chen: Yeah. The Communist party surrounds you and me anywhere: Hollywood, Wall Street, the business companies, even the universities, Congress and the administration, you can find them anywhere. So it’s very, very dangerous. Very dangerous.
Bill Saunders: Yeah. It’s a big theme of what Guangcheng and I are trying to do. Americans should of course, be concerned in a national security sense about China’s power. But they need to understand it’s not something that’s outside the borders of this country. It is freedom in the United States of America that’s at risk from the Chinese Communist Party. It has so much money, it buys people’s silence, it buys professors silence, it buys media silence, it buys Hollywood silence. And we have to be very vigilant or we lose our own freedom.
Bob Fu: Absolutely. That’s a very, very powerful point. The CCP’s kind of a transnational repression has extended to almost every corner on earth. From Sri Lanka and South Africa to the Djibouti to, you know, the kidnapping in Thailand, Burma, of Chinese citizens. Even Swedish citizens are kidnapped, because they voice their displeasure of the Communist party. And you have, in the UAE, the United Arab countries, China would have their Chinese top diplomats set up their own black jail.
Bill Saunders: In the United–
Bob Fu: In the United Arab. Yeah. We have to send our Texans to the city in the UAE. What’s that?
Bill Saunders: Yeah, I can’t remember–
Bob Fu: That big, famous city, basically to rescue these Chinese who were being put in the black jail. The interrogators of the Chinese diplomats, they transfer a villa into a prison.
Guangcheng Chen: Yeah.
Bill Saunders: It’s incredible. And I know the Chinese Communist party–
Bob Fu: Dubai. Yeah, that’s the city.
Guangcheng Chen: Yeah.
Bob Fu: Dubai.
Guangcheng Chen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bill Saunders: They’re very active in Latin America, very active in Africa. And as the Chinese communist party expands, freedom decreases.
Guangcheng Chen: If we can’t send democracy and rule of law to China, the communist party will send authoritarianism to the U.S.
Bill Saunders: Yeah, that’s so true. I think that’s the important basic point. Anybody listening, this is not a peripheral thing you can pay attention to or ignore or pay a little attention to, this is the central struggle, we could say, in the world between freedom and totalitarianism. And the Chinese communist party is pushing totalitarianism, and the U.S. and everybody and all the citizens and people in other countries have to push for freedom or we’ll lose it.
Bob Fu: Oh, absolutely.
Guangcheng Chen: Yeah.
Bob Fu: Just a few years ago, when the Taiwan president, Tsai Ing-Wen just made a stopover in New York on her way to some other country, some dissidents–Chinese dissidents–voluntarily held a welcome party on the streets in Manhattan. And guess what? The Chinese embassy sent thugs or their own people to start beating them up on the streets of New York City.
Bill Saunders: Wow.
Bob Fu: And sent two people to the emergency room in the hospital.
Bill Saunders: Incredible.
Bob Fu: And no one got arrested, no investigation at all. My family, barely a year ago, was being surrounded for two months by as many as 100 communist thugs, occupying the street in front of my house every day from 9:00 to 5:00, showing up and yelling and threatening my wife and my children.
Guangcheng Chen: Yes.
Bill Saunders: Incredible.
Bob Fu: Two months.
Guangcheng Chen: Yeah, yeah.
Bill Saunders: U.S. citizens are being threatened by communist thugs in the United States.
Bob Fu: In United soil.
Bill Saunders: What could be a better illustration of how dangerous this situation is?
Bob Fu: In West Texas!
Bill Saunders: Especially Texas? That’s a conservative state. You think they would stand up to the communists.
Bob Fu: That’s right.
Bill Saunders: I don’t know how to emphasize it anymore, but just stop and think about that. In New York City, American citizens and immigrants are beaten up by Chinese Communist Party embassy people. Nobody was arrested. And in Texas, Bob Fu’s house is surrounded every day from 9:00 to 5:00 with Chinese communist dupes, insulting him, threatening him, threatening his family. It’s a very serious issue in the U.S. people have got to take it seriously.
Bob Fu: Yeah, we know. Everybody knows the ring leader and the ring leader for that, threatening operation is known to everyone, to law enforcement and still at large.
Bill Saunders: Incredible.
Bob Fu: And enjoys his luxurious life. He’s still in New York City, in Connecticut.
Bill Saunders: And, you know, the thing about this, well, I don’t want to rehearse all the history, but the fact is, I’ve been involved in this for a long time. And we opposed certain trade deals with China, back around 1999, stuff like World Trade Organization membership or most favored nation status. And the hope of the people who supported it was that China would learn to play by the rules. But we said at the time, “They don’t play by the rules, they don’t respect the rules.”
So what has happened in that 20 year period is China has gotten extremely rich and they undermine every organization they’re involved in. So their riches is what allows them to do so many bad things because they can pay people or transfer money or bribe people. But they couldn’t if they weren’t so powerful. We would be much better off if we had not allowed them to become so wealthy. The U.S., I think, made bad mistakes where so much U.S. industry was lost and gone to China where, another issue we haven’t talked about is, you know, one of the reasons China is able to do things so cheaply is they don’t pay anybody anything. And sometimes they use prison labor. Labor and stuff like that. It’s incredible. I don’t know. The CCP has been taking advantage of, I don’t know, indifference, stupidity, ignorance and maybe just foolishness of people in America for a long time. You have to stand up to them. They’ve gotten richer, things have gotten worse. Unless we stand up to them, they’ll keep getting richer and things will keep getting worse.
Bob Fu: Unfortunately, that is the reality. We enrich our own enemies. Basically, we empower and enable these enemies. I mean, the K Street, those Washington lobbyists, both Republicans and Democrats. You have the former speaker of the House, John Boehner, publicly lobbying for Chinese spying, the telecommunication Huawei. And you have the former vice presidential candidate, Democratic Party Joe Lieberman, publicly hired GT, another telecommunication company. Yeah, he was on the sanction list. I mean, and defending their safety to Americans.
Bill Saunders: Yeah. Now, it’s money. The Chinese Communist Party has so much money that it has a major corrupting influence in the United States.To draw this podcast to a close, an example of this is maybe that we don’t know anything about lawyer Gao because the U.S. hasn’t pressed hard enough. You know, it’s compromised. And so this defender of human rights has disappeared, and we want to change that situation. So your event, tomorrow, I assume, will be filmed, and there’ll be video of it, and there’ll be all kinds of ways people can see it. So once you hear this podcast, you should, we’ll have things on our website, and I’m sure China Aid will have things on their website. You should go to those websites and learn more about what’s going to happen. Get involved in fighting against the CCP’s destruction of human rights, of its citizens, as well as our own citizens.
To read more about Gao Jisheng’s story, as well as those of countless other human rights activists and human rights atrocities committed by the Chinese Communist Party, visit catholic.edu/chr.