Dissident lawyer's family flees China to US asylum

vivicat

Dissident lawyer's family flees China to US asylum
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iBdFCxLcEbksnhqz1Cs_eindN4eQD96T9R8G0

By ALEXA OLESEN – 2 hours ago


in this Feb. 24, 2006 file photo, Gao Zhisheng gestures during an interview at a tea house in Beijing. The wife of Gao Zhisheng, a crusading civil rights lawyer, said Friday that she and their two children are now in the United States after paying human traffickers to smuggle them out of China to escape harassment by security agents.(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)


In this Feb. 24, 2006 file photo, Gao Zhisheng gestures during an interview at a tea house in Beijing. The wife of Gao Zhisheng, a crusading civil rights lawyer, said Friday that she and their two children are now in the United States after paying human traffickers to smuggle them out of China to escape harassment by security agents. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

BEIJING – The wife of a crusading civil rights lawyer said Friday that she and their two children are now in the United States after paying human traffickers to smuggle them out of China to escape harassment by security agents.

Geng He, wife of Gao Zhisheng, said the three made a harrowing eight-day trip by motorcycle from southern China across the mountains of Southeast Asia to Thailand in January. Granted refugee status by the United Nations in Bangkok and asylum by Washington, the family flew to the United States on Tuesday without Gao, she said.

Gao disappeared early last month and is believed to be in police detention. Geng said she did not know where her husband was and feared for his safety.

"We left because of the Chinese Communist Party's long-term persecution of my husband and the close surveillance and crackdown on our family," Geng said in a telephone interview from Arizona.

A self-trained lawyer, Gao began drawing scrutiny after taking on several politically charged cases, including persecution of members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. He later began to advocate constitutional reform of the authoritarian government.

For more than three years, the family has been under constant watch by plainclothes and uniformed police in Beijing. Last year authorities barred their 15-year-old daughter from going to school, leaving her depressed and suicidal, Geng said.

Geng said she, their daughter and 5-year-old son managed to leave Beijing for the southwestern border province of Yunnan on Jan. 9. Gao was under house arrest in his home province of Shaanxi at the time.

They paid the traffickers, known by Chinese as snakeheads, 40,000 yuan ($5,850) to be smuggled by motorcycle, she said. The smugglers, who barely spoke Chinese, insisted at one point on splitting up the family to evade capture. For nine hours, she was separated from her son and did not know if they would be reunited, she said.

"The whole way, I didn't know where we were or how much longer we would be traveling," she said. "We were so scared."

The Bangkok office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees referred calls about the case to its headquarters in Geneva, where the phone rang unanswered. Susan Stevenson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, said it was government policy not to comment publicly on individual refugee cases to protect applicants and their families.

Gao, 44, is one of the best known of a group of activist lawyers advocating legal reform and protections for human rights. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize last year along with political dissident Hu Jia.

Judicial authorities revoked his lawyer's license three years ago. He was arrested in August 2006 on subversion charges based on nine articles posted on Web sites abroad, the official Xinhua News Agency reported then. He was convicted and later placed under house arrest.

In a memoir published last year and in earlier open letters, Gao denounced China's human rights situation and detailed his and his family's harsh treatment by security forces.

He described torture sessions he said he endured that involved severe beatings, electric shocks to his genitals, and cigarettes held to his eyes.

Dissident lawyer's family flees China to US asylumhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090313/ap_on_re_as/as_china_us_outspoken_lawyer

By ALEXA OLESEN 1 hr 20 mins ago

BEIJING – Geng He said she put herself and her two children in the hands of human traffickers rather than stay in China, where her husband's relentless activism had made them the targets of endless police harassment.

After a risky overland escape to Thailand, Geng and her children are in the United States. But her husband, lawyer Gao Zhisheng, has disappeared, presumably into Chinese police custody.

A self-trained lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Gao began drawing scrutiny after taking on several politically charged cases, including alleged persecution of members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. He later began to advocate constitutional reform of the authoritarian government.

For more than three years, his family has been under constant watch by plainclothes and uniformed police in Beijing. Last year authorities barred their 15-year-old daughter from going to school, leaving her depressed and suicidal, Geng said.

"The pressure we've been under for so long made her want to hurt herself, kill herself," said Geng in a telephone interview from Phoenix, Arizona, where the family has resettled.

Geng, her daughter and 5-year-old son managed to leave Beijing for the southwestern border province of Yunnan on Jan. 9. She didn't say goodbye to her husband, who wasn't at their home in Beijing when she left. Instead she left him a note, apologizing.

"From a wife's perspective, I really wish that I could stay and take care of him," Geng said tearfully. "But I had no choice. For the children's good, I had to take them away with me."

Once in Yunnan, Geng paid the traffickers, known by Chinese as snakeheads, 40,000 yuan ($5,850) to smuggle her and the children across the border by motorcycle. They moved mostly at night, along winding mountain roads.

They couldn't communicate, so Geng never knew where she was or how much further they had to go. The harrowing trip across the mountains of Southeast Asia ended in Thailand on Jan. 16.

There, the family applied and was accepted by the U.S. as overseas refugees, said Bob Fu, a rights activist that helped coordinate the process.

Fu, the director of the Texas-based Christian rights group China Aid Association, said Geng and her children were "directly accepted by the U.S. as overseas refugees" instead of first applying to the U.N. for refugee status.

Officials at the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva and the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said they could not comment on individual refugee cases.

On Tuesday, Geng said she and her children flew to Los Angeles, then transited to Phoenix.

"My children asked me 'Mom, can we talk here?'" Geng said, describing her arrival in the U.S. "I'd been telling them all the time in Thailand not to speak, afraid someone would notice we were Chinese ... Finally, I was able to say 'Yes you can speak.'"

Geng's husband is one of the best known of a group of activist lawyers advocating legal reform and protections for human rights. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize last year along with another Chinese political dissident, Hu Jia.

Gao disappeared early last month and is believed to be in police detention. Geng said she did not know where her husband was and feared for his safety.

The Beijing Public Security Bureau did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment and information about Gao's whereabouts.

In a memoir published last year and in earlier open letters, Gao detailed his and his family's harsh treatment by security forces. He described torture sessions he said he endured that involved severe beatings, electric shocks to his genitals and cigarettes held to his eyes.

marie_bi

垃圾！恶心，到美国去吧，反正也是垃圾！

johnsonpersonal

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