On April 20th, which was Gao Zhisheng’s birthday, he went missing again on August 13, 2017, and there has been no news of him since. Mr. Matas’ speech at the award ceremony for Gao Zhisheng in 2007 still holds significant relevance to this day. With his permission, the speech has been translated into Chinese for the readers to enjoy.
I have never met Gao Zhisheng in person, nor have I communicated with him through phone calls, emails, or letters. However, based on my personal experience, I know that he is a hero, universally acknowledged as a competent lawyer.
In May 2006, the Coalition to Investigate Persecution against the Falun Gong asked me and David Kilgour to investigate and write a report on the allegations of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China. The accusations claimed that practitioners were being killed for their organs, which were then sold to clients from around the world. David Kilgour is a former government official of Canada.
For this investigation, we needed to go to China. As an immigration lawyer from Canada, I knew that attaching an invitation letter from someone in the host country when applying for visas could increase our chances of obtaining them. We sought invitation letters from China for this purpose, and Gao Zhisheng responded to our request.
David Kilgour and I requested a meeting with the Chinese Embassy in Canada to discuss the conditions for our entry. While our request was accepted, the officials we met with denied the allegations and ignored our intended trip. Therefore, we never formally applied for visas or submitted Mr. Gao’s invitation letter to the Chinese Embassy.
Shortly after, Mr. Gao was arrested on August 15, subjected to torture, charged with “inciting subversion,” convicted on December 12, and sentenced to three years in prison with a five-year probation on December 22. Despite being on probation, he remains under soft detention to this day. David Kilgour and I couldn’t help but be concerned about him. What had happened?
Mr. Gao grew up in the most difficult circumstances imaginable to become a successful human rights lawyer. He was born in a cave, with his parents unable to afford his education, which led him to stand outside classroom windows to listen to lessons. In 2001, the Chinese Ministry of Justice named Mr. Gao one of China’s top ten lawyers. He defended many clients in difficult situations, such as coal miners suing their employers and a client seeking compensation for the houses seized for the 2008 Olympics.
Three of his clients were Yang Maodong, Zheng Yichun, and Pastor Cai Zhuohua. Mr. Yang was detained for providing legal advice to villagers in Taishi Village, Guangdong Province, while villagers tried to remove the village head for corruption. Mr. Zheng, a journalist and former professor, was sentenced to seven years in prison for expressing his views on a website. Pastor Cai was sentenced to three years in prison for printing and selling Bibles.
As long as Mr. Gao did not touch on Falun Gong, he could safely handle such cases. It was his protest against the persecution of Falun Gong that ultimately brought trouble upon himself.
However, this fact raises a deeper question. Why is defending victims of Falun Gong more dangerous than representing other clients? Why does the Chinese Communist government see standing up for Falun Gong as worse than defending Christians?
Many may not know what Falun Gong is, but even understanding its nature does not answer the above questions.
Falun Gong is an ancient Chinese spiritual practice that emphasizes the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. It has no political intentions or agenda and advocates for non-violence, even in self-defense. Yet, the Chinese government aggressively targets a group of innocent practitioners who do nothing but exercise and meditate, more so than other groups—why?
Like all cases of persecution, the issue lies with the persecutors, not the victims. For instance, understanding anti-Semitism does not require learning Judaism; instead, it requires examining the perpetrators. Understanding the persecution of Falun Gong does not necessitate learning Falun Gong; rather, it requires an understanding of the Chinese Communist Party.
Falun Gong emerged in 1992, coinciding with the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, spearheaded by its founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi. According to estimates from the Chinese government in 1999, Falun Gong had approximately 70 million practitioners, outnumbering the Party’s 60 million members.
In China, having such a large following for any non-Communist belief is intolerable. The Communist Party began criticizing Falun Gong, initially at the grassroots level. However, this ideological conflict eventually reached the highest echelons. The then-Chinese President Jiang Zemin was shocked by Falun Gong’s growing influence. To him, the supremacy of the Communist Party’s ideology was being threatened. In July 1999, he ordered the crackdown on Falun Gong.
On one level, the Communist Party’s repression of Falun Gong appears to be a result of totalitarian madness, fabricating an enemy out of thin air. The Party needs enemies to solidify its power, and unfortunately, Falun Gong became that enemy.
To a communist regime, having no enemy is disastrous because without demons to vilify, the Party fails to legitimize its rule.
Undoubtedly, such madness exists within totalitarian systems. However, there is another dimension to the Chinese context. Falun Gong is a product of ancient Chinese traditions that have taken modern form. In the words of Hegel or Marxism, they represent the present stage of dialectics in Chinese historical law. They embody the real China, grassroots China, and the people’s China.
The appearance of Falun Gong in 1992 was no coincidence, as global belief in any form of communism was fading away. What would fill the ideological void left by communism’s collapse worldwide? In China, the answer was Falun Gong.
The Communist Party views Falun Gong as regressive, a significant step back to the pre-Party era. The success of Falun Gong implies that, apart from the scars left by the Party, China remains as it was before the Communist Party, as if communism never existed.
The Communist Party’s dilemma is that Falun Gong is genuinely Chinese, while communism is evidently foreign. Communism represents an intrusion of Western ideological thought into China. Communist Party members realized that a widely popular ideology rooted in China itself was undermining their foundations.
Allowing the existence of Falun Gong, at least in the short term, does not signify the immediate collapse of the current regime. However, it does imply that any ideological remnants of the Communist Party in the minds of the Chinese people would vanish. Once even within the Party, no one believes in communism anymore, the Party’s grip on power starts slipping away. This seems to be the reason for the brutal crackdown the CCP enforces, an oppression that has no limits and is far more severe than that on any other group.
From the verbal abuse the CCP directs at Falun Gong, it is evident they fear ideologically. All the hatred once aimed at capitalists, the bourgeoisie, and the exploiters is now shifted towards Falun Gong, accusing them of being a cult that brainwashes individuals to kill themselves and others.
As expected, for a group subjected to such extreme defamation, their level of victimization is terrifying, far exceeding that of any other group. The CCP first incites hatred, then dehumanizes, marginalizes, and depersonalizes. Finally, torture and killing follow.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture’s report in March 2006 revealed that 66% of torture victims in China were Falun Gong practitioners. This was followed by Uighurs at 11%, with other groups below 10%. By December 22, 2006, David Kilgour and I confirmed over 3,000 named Falun Gong practitioners had died due to persecution.
Gao Zhisheng voluntarily immersed himself in this whirlpool. In December 2004, October 2005, and December 2005, he wrote three open letters protesting the persecution of Falun Gong.
After the second letter, the Beijing Judicial Bureau suspended his law firm’s operations for a year. In December, his lawyer’s license was revoked.
In response to these actions, Mr. Gao publicly left the Party (announcing his resignation together with his wife, Geng He) and wrote his third letter. After sending the third letter, he received a call from the police, warning him that he had crossed a red line, bringing trouble upon himself and his family. Starting from December, he and his family were under police surveillance.
In January 2006, upon discovering police filming him, he also filmed the police and was subsequently arrested. This time, the police threatened to kill him. A few days later, still in January, a car with covered license plates, followed by a similarly obscured military vehicle, attempted to run him over.
In response, Mr. Gao organized a relay hunger strike, where lawyers and human rights defenders took turns fasting one to two days to protest the government’s persecution. Authorities arrested his law firm staff, while Mr. Gao kept the firm open despite having his license revoked. However, from mid-February onwards, he had to continue working without any staff.
In March 2006, after the initial reports on organ harvesting were made public, prompting us to conduct our investigation, Mr. Gao’s voice never wavered. He published articles condemning these practices by the authorities. He expressed willingness to join the Coalition to Investigate Persecution against the Falun Gong, which empowered us to carry out our work.
Following this, Mr. Gao invited David Kilgour and me to conduct our investigation in China. This, in itself, was a courageous act. But the manner of the invitation was even bolder.
As mentioned earlier, I had never directly communicated with Mr. Gao, but he invited us to China, which may seem contradictory but is true.
In his invitation letter, he wrote:
“As all my (landline) phone and internet have been cut off, I can only communicate through reporters and media.”
Indeed, we received the invitation letter through the media. Mr. Gao called reporters who then conveyed his invitation to us through our translator. Subsequently, the reporters sent the invitation to the Epoch Times, where they published it on June 11, 2006.
I must admit, I was uneasy about Mr. Gao’s actions, inviting us in such a manner placed himself in danger. He foresaw and addressed my concerns in his letter:
“Perhaps you are worried that my support and invitation to you will endanger me. But the danger I face is not due to my support and invitation to you but because we are up against an evil, dictatorial system. Thus, the danger already exists. The root of the danger lies in this evil, inhuman system rather than in what we choose to do.”
Our report’s first edition was released on July 6, 2006, concluding that the allegations were true, the large-scale organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners was indeed happening, leading to their killings. In the first edition of the report, we made every effort to protect Mr. Gao by not mentioning him and his invitation or his public letters opposing the persecution of Falun Gong. Nevertheless, we were deeply grateful to him, not only for his actions but also for his analysis and insights.
When Mr. Gao was almost immediately arrested, subjected to torture, convicted, and sentenced, we were shocked. However, based on our understanding of the CCP, we were not surprised at all.
The remarkable aspect of Mr. Gao is not only his admirable stance for justice and the rule of law but also the extreme persecution he endured as a consequence. What truly sets him apart is his unwavering commitment to his principles despite the escalating persecution. He clearly knew that everything he did would bring disaster upon him, yet he persisted.
It is for this reason that David Kilgour and I decided to nominate Mr. Gao as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. At the end of January this year, we sent a nomination letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
I personally support awarding Mr. Gao Zhisheng with this honor (the Courageous Advocacy Award), which, in some ways, is a bigger recognition than the Nobel Peace Prize. I am well aware that he is only the third person in fifty years to receive this distinction and the first and only awardee. Moreover, he fully meets all the criteria outlined for courageous advocates.
We hope never to witness situations like those faced by Gao Zhisheng again. But we must also hope that if we ever do, we will act as courageously as he did. Gao Zhisheng, we salute you.
David Matas is a lawyer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.