U.N. Rights Group Calls on China to Release Detained Lawyer

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Source: The New York Times

BEIJING — A United Nations human rights agency has demanded that the Chinese government immediately release a prominent Chinese human rights lawyer who has been detained for nearly a year, according to a statement released on Monday by an advocacy group. The lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, had said he was tortured during previous rounds of detention.

The agency, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, also said in a written statement that the Chinese government should “provide for reparation of the harm caused” to the lawyer, Gao Zhisheng. A feisty Christian who has been repeatedly detained — and tortured, by his account — Mr. Gao has defended practitioners of Falun Gong, the banned spiritual group that came under a brutal crackdown by Chinese security forces.

“The U.N. Working Group held that the detention violated international law because Gao’s disappearance was punishment for exercising his fundamental human rights and because the government failed to meet even the minimum international standards for due process,” the group said in its statement. That statement was first sent to the Chinese government in July, and was made public on Monday by Freedom Now, an advocacy group that has worked on Mr. Gao’s case.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/world/asia/29china.html