China Dissident Says Confession Was Forced

By Joseph Kahn | The New York Times
10 April 2007

BEIJING, April 9 — Gao Zhisheng, one of China’s most outspoken dissidents until his conviction on sedition charges late last year, said in a recorded statement made available over the weekend that while his confession had resulted in a light sentence, it had been made under mental and physical duress.

Mr. Gao’s remarks, recorded by a close friend and offered to journalists in Beijing, were his first public statement since he was convicted in December. He was given a suspended sentence.

His confession brought criticism from some other human rights advocates.

Mr. Gao lives in Beijing with his wife and children. But he said he remained in nearly total isolation, surrounded by plainclothes security forces and forbidden to leave his home, use his telephone or computer or otherwise communicate with the outside world.

He also said that a lengthy confession letter released to the public by the authorities after his conviction, while genuine, had come only after he had been subjected to torture. He said his interrogators repeatedly threatened to punish his wife and children unless he admitted the crimes they said he had committed.

“Although in the past I had some idea of how this group ignores justice, how they nakedly and impudently use evil means to realize their objectives, I really did not understand well enough,” Mr. Gao said, referring to Chinese public security forces.

He said his captors had forced him to sit motionless in an iron chair for extended sessions that totaled hundreds of hours, surrounded him with bright lights and used other torture techniques aimed at breaking his will. He said he had agreed to their terms because they repeatedly intimated that the well-being of his wife and children could not be guaranteed unless he cooperated.

“In the end I decided I could not haggle about my children’s future,” he said.

Mr. Gao, a lawyer, gained prominence among human rights advocates and grass-roots organizers in China and their supporters overseas for his uncompromising denunciations of police and judicial abuses and his scathing open letters to senior Communist Party leaders.

He called attention to what he described as systematic abuses against members of the Falun Gong spiritual sect, which is banned in China. He also helped organize a hunger strike against intimidation tactics used by the country’s State Security forces.

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