China Arrests Dissident Lawyer for Subversion

By REUTERS | The New York Times
October 12, 2006

China has arrested outspoken human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng on charges of inciting subversion, his lawyer said on Thursday, extending a government campaign to curb activists challenging its authority.

Gao was arrested on September 21 ``on suspicion of inciting subversion of state power,'' lawyer Mo Shaoping said, adding that he had only now learned of the decision from prosecutors.

``In fact, it should be the public security bureau that notifies us. But I asked them repeatedly and got no reply, and only then went to the prosecutors,'' Mo told Reuters.

Gao, in his early 40s, is a famously combative rights lawyer who has taken up the causes of dispossessed oil investors, labor activists and -- most controversially -- members of Falun Gong, an outlawed spiritual sect.

His arrest marked another step in the ruling Chinese Communist Party's campaign to stifle an expanding nationwide ''rights defense'' network seeking to expand citizens' rights through courts and publicity campaigns, said activists.

``Right now, the government's number one enemy is the rights defense movement, and Gao Zhisheng has been one of its leading figures,'' Hu Jia, a Beijing-based dissident who knows Gao, told Reuters.

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