Missing dissident held in Xinjiang

Geng We, wife of Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, next to an image of her husband, at a press conference in Washington, on January 18, 2011

Prominent Chinese dissident Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer who first disappeared into police custody nearly two years ago, has been imprisoned in the far western region of Xinjiang, his brother said.
The United States, the European Union and the United Nations have called on Beijing to release Gao, who has defended some of China’s most vulnerable people including Christians and coal miners.
He was arrested in February 2009 and has been held largely incommunicado by authorities except for a brief release in March 2010.
“I received the decision letter this morning saying Gao Zhisheng is in Shaya prison in Xinjiang,” his brother, Gao Zhiyi, told AFP on Sunday. He added the document was issued by a Beijing court.
After Gao briefly reappeared more than 20 months ago following his apparent release by police, friends and colleagues he spoke with reported that he continued to be tailed by authorities and was in ill-health.
In April 2010 he disappeared again and has not been heard from since. The charges against him were never made public but he was arrested in 2006 for “subversion”. The official Xinhua news agency said last month that Gao had been sent back to prison for three years after a court ruled he had “seriously violated probation rules a number of times”.
The prison, located in Xinjiang’s Aksu prefecture, could not be reached by telephone on Sunday.