Free Gao Zhisheng! (Protest at Chinese Consulate)

Sunday's protest marks the 8th anniversary of the disappearance of Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng in August 2017.

From the Chinese Human Rights Defenders website (
https://www.nchrd.org/2025/08/china-release-lawyer-gao-zhisheng-forcibly-disappeared-since-2017/):

------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In the 1990s, Gao Zhisheng became one of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers, representing members of religious communities, victims of corruption and land grabs, and free speech cases while criticizing the government’s human rights violations. Beijing authorities started persecuting him in 2005 for this work, shutting down his law firm and disbarring him. The following year he was arrested and convicted by a Beijing court on charges of 'inciting subversion of state power,' and given a three-year suspended prison sentence and five years probation.

Between 2007 and 2010, Beijing and Shaanxi authorities forcibly disappeared Gao several times. In 2011, a Beijing court announced that his probation was being revoked, and he was made to serve his original three-year prison sentence. While in Shaya Prison in the Uyghur region, where he was sent to serve his sentence, Gao was tortured and mistreated; after his release in 2014 he suffered from related health complications, but was held under house arrest in Shaanxi Province, where his family are from, and denied access to adequate medical care.

On August 13, 2017, Gao attempted to escape his house arrest with the assistance of several activists, but was captured by police believed to be from Beijing and Shaanxi. Despite repeated efforts from Geng He and family members and fellow activists since that time, including raising his case at the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC), Chinese authorities have never admitted to holding Gao. His location and status remain unknown."
------------------------------------------------------------------------

All people everywhere deserve freedom, democracy, self-determination, and to have their basic human rights respected. The Chinese Communist Party is one of the most egregious violators of these values.

Those who run the CCP regime must not forget that the world is watching! Those who trample freedom and violate human rights must be held accountable.