Hu Jia, a renowned Chinese human rights advocate currently under house arrest, is a close friend of attorney Gao Zhisheng .
On Dec. 12, 2006, Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court secretly tried attorney Gao Zhisheng. Before the trial, judge Jia Lianchun refused attorney Mo Shaoping the right to act as Gao's defending lawyer even though Gao's family had hired Mo.
Judge Jia gave the excuse that Gao refused to be defended by anyone, and the judge claimed that he had not received the power of attorney from Mo. Strangely enough, the judge was able to get Gao's elder brother's phone number and even managed to call him in an attempt to persuade him to withdraw Mo as Gao's defense attorney.
According to Gao's brother, judge Jia Lianchun said, "I guarantee with my own reputation that Gao Zhisheng himself said that he doesn't need a defending lawyer."
Since Jia did not provide any legal paper signed by Gao himself refusing Mo as defense lawyer, Gao's brother replied to the judge: "You don't even have any humanity left in you, so don't talk to me about your reputation."
The secret trial was organized suddenly so that Mo was unable to attend, and Gao's wife Geng He also did not receive any notification. Consequently, none of Gao's family or friends were able to attend this "open trial."
The court declared that the Dec. 12 trial date had been make public three days beforehand. We conducted a detailed investigation about this. On Dec. 15 and 18, many volunteers went to Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court in succession. They found out that the court makes messages public by pasting on the bulletin board and on an electronic bulletin board system in the hall.
The bulletin board is only for civil cases, and criminal cases are only shown on the electronic bulletin board system. But for six weeks, the hall had been under renovation, and the electronic bulletin board system had stopped working. Therefore, no information about Gao's case could have been made public through the electronic bulletin board.
Our volunteers repeatedly confirmed with staff working in the court that they have to notify the suspect's family and attorney directly for all criminal cases. Therefore, we can say what the judge and the Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court said regarding Gao's sudden trial were all lies.
Gao Zhisheng's wife Geng He called judge Jia to ask about the trial on Dec. 12, but judge Jia refused to disclose any information. Geng He then asked for the contact details of the two defending attorneys the court claimed they had appointed for Gao.
Judge Jia also refused these requests. Finally, the judge told Geng He, "It is the higher authority's order that nothing can be said about Gao Zhisheng case."
After Dec. 18, Geng went to Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court many times with the hope of getting the date for the verdict announcement. But judge Jia intentionally avoided her, and later on, no one even answered his office phone.
In my opinion, it is really hard to believe the National Security would allow Geng He to be present at the sentencing or to obtain the written verdict.
Since Dec. 21, Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court began strengthening its security; all bailiffs were requested to be on duty.
In the evening of Dec. 20, my wife returned to Beijing from Fujian, and I had to take a police car to the airport to bring her home. But the police doubled the number of policemen to guard me and claimed it was a special order from an upper level authority. I believe this kind of security arrangement must have an unspeakable reason.
This is my personal judgment, but I feel have a responsibility to tell everyone in order to avoid missing the opportunity for the international community to expose this charade of a "legal" and "fair" trial.
Friday, Dec. 22, 2006, was the 130th day that attorney Gao Zhisheng had been abducted by this "national organized crime" [group]—the CCP. Although the public security, the procuratorate, and the court all tightly blocked out any information about Gao, we believe that because of the Beijing police's recent large-scale and unusual security activities, Gao's sentence may be soon heard.
If the sentence is pronounced at this time, with the Christmas holiday weekend in the United States, Europe, and all democratic countries that value human rights, it would greatly diminish the attention on Gao's case from western governments, human rights organizations, and the public, and thus greatly reduce the pressure that the Chinese communist regime would face internationally.
Gao's arrest and case itself does not involve any state secrets, but the Chinese communist regime made the date of the court session and the date of the sentence into "state secrets." Therefore we can say that Dec. 22 could very well be the day of the verdict. If not that day, it would likely be in the next few days.
We believe that the Chinese judiciary system will make an adjustment to the sentence based on the extent of attention from the outside. So we must be well prepared from now on to expose even further the secret verdict and sentencing after the secret trial.
We must expose to the international community whether Gao's wife was able to attend the court session and obtain the written verdict herself. We must pay particular attention and expose the immoral and illegal fate of Gao who has been completely deprived of any constitutional rights during his arrest, incarceration, trial, and verdict.
Hu Jia
On the 159th day being abducted by Beijing police in Beijing—the 2008 Olympics city.
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