Gao Zhisheng

Gao Zhisheng (born 20 April 1964) is a Chinese human rights attorney and dissident known for defending activists and religious minorities and documenting human rights abuses in China.

Because of his work, Zhisheng has been disbarred and detained by the Chinese government several times, and severely tortured.

In 1989, the legislature passed the Administrative Procedure Law, which gave Chinese citizens the right to sue state agencies for the first time.

In the 1990s, Gao represented the family of a Xinjiang boy who became comatose after a doctor erroneously gave him ethanol intravenously; Gao won $100,000 in damages for a boy who had lost his hearing in another malpractice case.

He acted on behalf of a private businessman who had taken control of and redressed a troubled state-owned company when the district government used force to reclaim it after it became profitable.

The case went to the Supreme Court, with a verdict in favour of the businessman; however, according to Gao, he has been a victim of reprisals from Xinjiang leaders, who warned clients and court officials to shun him.

In 1991, inspired by a newspaper article that mentioned a plan by Deng Xiaoping, then China's paramount leader, to train 150,000 new lawyers and develop the Chinese legal system, he took a course in law.

Gao credited his excellent memory of titles and clauses for passing all his exams; he passed the bar in 1995.

Gao was director, founder of the Beijing-based Zhi Sheng Law Firm, having moved to Beijing in 2000.

In 2001, he was recognized by China's Ministry of Justice as "one of the country's 10 best lawyers" for his work in defending victims of medical malpractice and fighting for just compensation for dispossessed landowners.

Over the following years, he defended a wide range of clients who had been victims of injustice.

Gao's committed involvement with such cases, he says, is strongly bound with the emphasis of his Christian identity on morality and compassion.

In the summer of 2005, Gao defended fellow lawyer-activist Zhu Jiuhu, who was accused of "disturbing public order" while representing private investors in oil wells that were seized by the government in Shaanxi.

He secured Zhu's release several months later through an intensive publicity campaign, although Zhu was barred from practicing law.

The Beijing Judicial Bureau has prohibited him from acting in certain cases and clients, including Falun Gong, the Shaanxi oil case and an incident of political unrest in Taishi village in Guangdong.

He refused to drop any of them, arguing that the bureau had no legal authority to dictate what cases he accepts or rejects.

In 2005, he resigned from the Communist Party.

Shortly after sending an open letter to the PRC leadership that accused the government of running extrajudicial "brainwashing base(s)" for dealing with Falun Gong practitioners, he received a visit from State Security agents.

Gao's family was put under 24-hour police surveillance in the autumn of 2005.

On 4 November, shortly after being warned to retract a second open letter he had written about his Falun Gong cases, Gao received a new summons from the judicial bureau accusing him of a "serious violation of the Law on Managing the Registration of Law Firms" for failing to promptly register a new business address following a move.

Gao's memoir, A China More Just (2007), documents his "fight as a rights lawyer in the world's largest communist state."

In subsequent writing, he accuses the ruling Chinese Communist Party of state-sponsored torture and reports having been tortured by the Chinese secret police.

One significant case he spearheaded was for fair compensation for a client whose home was expropriated for a building project connected with the 2008 Summer Olympics.

However, Gao cites an internal document drafted by the central government he had read that instructed all district courts to reject cases involving such land disputes, which he said was "blatantly illegal", but which "every court in Beijing blindly obeyed."

Other cases include:

Following the Beijing land compensation case, he entered what was to become a protracted battle over several hundred acres of farmland that Guangdong Province had seized to construct a university.

Although Gao met with many legal impediments, he took his campaign to the people.

He publicly accused Guangdong officials of "brazen murderous schemes", which stoked public anger and helped his clients obtain more generous compensation.

He last disappeared in February 2009 and was unofficially detained until December 2011, when it was announced that he has now been imprisoned for three years.

His commitment to defending his clients is influenced by his Christian beliefs and their tenets on morality and compassion.

He disappeared in February 2009.

At the beginning of 2012, Gao's brother said he had received a court document saying his brother was in Shayar jail in Xinjiang.

In 2014, it was reported that Zhisheng was released from jail and put under house arrest.

He disappeared again in August 2017 in an apparent attempt to escape house arrest and was subsequently taken back into custody on his recapture in September.

Gao was born and grew up in a house in Shaanxi Province with six siblings; his father died at the age of 40, when Zhisheng was 11.

He briefly worked in a coal mine.

With his family not being able to afford elementary school, Gao said he sat listening outside the classroom window.

Later, an uncle helped him attend secondary school, after which he qualified to join the People's Liberation Army.

His unit was stationed at a base in Kashgar, in Xinjiang region, and he became a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Later, he left the PLA and began working as a food vendor.