Jubilee Campaign participated during the Human Rights Council’s 45th Session’s Interactive Dialogue with the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. Thanks to ChinaAid, Grace Gao – the human rights lawyers Gao Zhisheng’s daughter, was able to raise the case of China’s involvement in the enforced disappearance her father. Read her full statement below:
Oral Statement
Forty-fifth session of the Human Rights Council
Interactive Dialogue with the Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances.
14 September – 6 October 2020
NGO: Jubilee Campaign
Speaker: Grace Gao
Ms. President,
I would like to draw the Council’s attention to the pattern of enforced disappearances of human rights advocates and lawyers in the People’s Republic of China.
My Dad, Gao Zhisheng, is a human rights lawyer and known for defending activists and religious minorities and documenting human rights abuse in China. Because of his work he was detained by the Chinese government several times and severely tortured. He last disappeared on August 2017. The Chinese authorities have not provided any conclusive information on my dad, nor his status or location. Chinese authorities are also placing pressure on my family who still live in China by not letting them leave their local area nor issuing any way for my family to visit.
“We are in this together” has been heard numerous times during this pandemic. Today I am with all the victims of enforced or involuntary disappearances in China as well as around the globe. It is our responsibility to call on the human rights council to urge China to release human rights activists who have been forcibly disappeared. I will never forget that my father Gao Zhisheng is one of them.
Thank you.
Jubilee Campaign also submitted a written statement regarding the case of Gao Zhisheng and other human rights activists who have been arrested by the Chinese Communist Party or have forcibly disappeared.
Also found here: https://undocs.org/A/HRC/45/NGO/102
About Gao Zhisheng Gao Zhisheng is one of the most widely-known human rights lawyers in China, notably for his work defending religious minorities and victims of state persecution, highlighting the torture of Falun Gong practitioners, and defending political activists and critics of the Chinese Communist Party. Gao Zhisheng is a survivor of torture and arrest at the hands of the CCP arrest. After his release from prison in August 2014, Gao still languished under house arrest for three years until he escaped on August 13, 2017 and lived without restraint for three weeks before vanishing into police custody without formal charges. This is the most recent news we have regarding the status of human rights defender Gao Zhisheng.