Government claims well-known Christian dissident, who has been missing for a year, is working in Urumqi. However, neither his family nor his attorney has had any news from him. Gao’s brother wants an answer from Beijing as to his whereabouts.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Gao Zhisheng appears to have vanished, but for Chinese authorities the well-known lawyer and human rights advocate is working in Urumqi, the capital of the northwestern province of Xinjiang. Chinese dissidents believe instead that he has been in prison for the past year, whilst his wife denies having had any contact with him since he disappeared.

Gao is “working” in the Xinjiang region, the Chinese-American human rights group Dui Hua Foundation said this week, citing Chinese Embassy officials. However, according to Mo Shaoping, Gao’s attorney during his trial in December 2006, the Embassy’s statement is deliberately vague and not reassuring.

Gao Zhisheng was arrested for the first time in August 2006. After a trial that lasted a year, he was sentenced to house arrest. He was with “anti-state subversion”, an infamous legal notion that allows the government and the Communist Party to incarcerate anyone they want.

Gao gained prominence when he published three letters to Chinese leaders, calling for democracy and respect for human rights.

Things got worse for him in 2008, when he published articles online against Chinese repression. The authorities used intimidation and violence to silence him, and eventually seized him and put him away in February 2009.

The 44-year-old Gao was a well-respected member of the Communist Party, praised as one of the best lawyers in the country. In 2001, he was named one of the top ten lawyers in China. Then he began representing miners, underground Christians and Falun Gong members against the authorities. In 2007, he wrote an open letter to the US Congress slamming human rights violations in China. This led to his arrest.

Like his lawyer, Gao’s family has not had any news about the activist. Gao’s eldest brother, Gao Zhiyi, said the family wanted to know whether Gao was alive or not, wondering why the family could not get any information about him.

On 21 January, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu in the first implicit admission of his arrest told reporters, "Gao is where he is supposed to be” and he has been there for the past year.

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