Gao Zhisheng, the daughter of Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, was invited to speak at the 45th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday about her father’s three-year-long enforced disappearance, according to a release from the China Aid Association, a U.S.-based civil religious rights organization. The case of Gao Zhisheng’s enforced disappearance has also been brought before the UN Human Rights Council, with international organizations calling attention to China’s arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of human rights advocates and lawyers.
In her speech, Geng said she still doesn’t know if her father is still alive. But she stressed, “I will never forget my father, who was one of the victims of enforced disappearance. Geng also expressed support for other victims of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance by the Chinese authorities and urged the Chinese authorities to immediately release enforced disappeared defenders.
“According to the Association for Aid to China (AIC), although the Chinese constitution protects citizens from human rights abuses and persecution by state and non-state actors, lawyers and human rights defenders are considered separatists, radicals, and enemies, and are unjustly punished. Gao Zhisheng, one of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers, is known for his courageous defense of the rights of religious minorities and victims of state persecution, highlighting the torture of Falun Gong practitioners, yet his fearless actions have made him a victim of the Chinese Communist Party’s unjust violations of human rights and judicial freedom.
The “Association for Aid to China” specifically requested the United Nations to send independent investigators to China to locate the whereabouts of Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer who was forcibly disappeared.
On August 13, 2017, after three years of house arrest, Gao Zhisheng escaped from his home in Yulin, Shaanxi Province, but was detained by authorities without any formal charges and Out of touch with the outside world to this day.
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