free Gao Yu

[BADecker]

Gao Yu should be happy they haven't turned her into Yu Goo by now.

 

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[Beliathon]

what do you mean?

Neo-feudal lords (capitalist elite) need to be abolished. Once they're gone, this kind of shit won't happen anymore.

[msc_de]

what do you mean?

Neo-feudal lords (capitalist elite) need to be abolished. Once they're gone, this kind of shit won't happen anymore.

capitalism without democracy is the main problem , such as china

[msc_de]

FREE GAO YU

[fuddudle]

She was part of the Tian An Men incident?

[msc_de]

[msc_de]

She was part of the Tian An Men incident?

http://www.rfa.org/english/women/gaoyu-10232015142053.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

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'The People They Killed Were Citizens'

2015-10-23


http://www.rfa.org/english/women/gaoyu-10232015142053.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Veteran journalist Gao Yu is currently serving a seven-year jail term handed down by the Beijing No. 3 Intermediate People's Court in April for "leaking state secrets overseas,” although she has repeatedly denied breaking Chinese law and continues to appeal. During a trip to the United States in 2006, Gao spoke to RFA's Mandarin Service about her life story spanning the history of modern China, including the June 4, 1989 military crackdown on the student-led democracy movement on Tiananmen Square:

On Aug. 28, 1990, they had kept me locked up for 13 or 14 months by then, the police took me back home in their car at about 8.00 p.m. I had already been detained for so long that I demanded an explanation. "You need to tell me what this was about," I told them. "No, we don't," they said.

They hadn't told my family when they detained me, not until they'd held me for three-and-a-half months. Then they issued a notice of "residential surveillance" which was in effect until my release.

I still remember what it was like to come home that day, the neighbors were all there to welcome me. As soon as I got back, the next-door neighbor, who worked as a lecturer at the science and technology university, told the police off, saying "I had a heart attack because you took Gao away, and I had to stay in hospital for two months."

Another old department chief from the culture ministry told me I was a hero. I was only locked up for a year and a half, and I was a hero.

They disappeared me suddenly in 1989, and my husband thought I'd probably been beaten to death. He started looking for me in the morgues of major hospitals, when they had laid out the bodies and started taking photos of them. He would go to the hospitals and look through the photos. If he found one that looked like me, he would have the body wheeled out.

Husband's diabetes, mother's death

Then he started asking at all of the detention centers in Beijing to see if I was there, but I wasn't. He had a pretty hard time of it, by all accounts, and wound up with diabetes. He was 54 in 1989, five years older than me, and he got diabetes as a result of all the stress and grief.

Somebody who lived upstairs from me also disappeared very suddenly. During the June 4 crackdown they were firing at our apartment building and [my husband] told the kids to get under the bed because they were firing on the upper floors of the building, on the fourth floor, the highest floor in our building. He was afraid the kids would be hit; he was so scared.

As soon as I got home [from detention], my mother, who had been through a lot of [political] campaigns since 1949, including the Cultural Revolution, when our house was searched and there were a lot of problems because my father was a high-ranking official. But this was to be the last political campaign that my mother experienced.

About 20 days after I got back, in September, she just collapsed to the floor, and we tried to set her upright. We didn't know what to do, so we called an ambulance. They told us it was a heart attack, and took her to the Anzhen hospital.

There wasn't as much equipment in the hospitals back in those days. When we got there, my mother ... needed a CT scan, and those were only available in the Sino-Japanese Hospital next door. We didn't find out that it was a stroke until we got there. When she woke up, she couldn't speak, because the stroke had impaired her language function.

A year and two months later, my mother was in a coma ... she was thin, just skin and bones, and then she died. I don't think she would have died so soon if it hadn't been for June 4.

Now, so many years later, I think that the [democracy] movement would have been the best way of achieving harmony between the people and the government. We hear so much about a harmonious society today. But what if you're not harmonious?

Maybe they don't want to reappraise the movement for now, but they could at least go after those who were responsible; that would be enough. They should admit that the people they killed were ordinary citizens, and not violent rebels.

[Late ousted premier] Zhao Ziyang was very clear about that. He wouldn't go against his conscience, even if it meant going to hell. He didn't want to give the order to the troops to fire. If he had agreed to do that, he'd still be the general secretary today.

He had always wanted to solve China's problems on the basis of democracy and the rule of law. If the Chinese Communist Party had been able to accept his views, if the gerontocracy hadn't been carrying on its machinations behind the scenes ... he would have got enough support within the central committee and the standing committee; after
all, he was the general secretary. If he had succeeded, I really think that China would be in a great place right now.

Reported by Zhang Min for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

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2nd Appeal on 24.11.2015

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Chinese Journalist Released on Medical Grounds, to Serve Shorter Sentence At Home
2015-11-26 

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-gaoyu-11262015140214.html

Authorities in the Chinese capital on Thursday reduced the jail term of jailed veteran journalist Gao Yu on appeal and ordered her conditional release on medical grounds.

Amid tight security on the streets outside, the Beijing High People's Court cut Gao's seven-year jail term for "leaking state secrets overseas" to five years, her lawyer Mo Shaoping told RFA.

"Today's appeal hearing was open, and the judge just read out the judgment, and then it was all over," Mo said after the appeal hearing. "Gao Yu didn't get chance to speak, and neither did her lawyers."

"Her son Zhao Ming attended the hearing."

Soon afterwards, an earlier application for medical parole to the court of first instance, the Beijing No. 3 Intermediate People's Court, was granted, and Gao, 71, was released from police detention, he said.

"Of course it's a good thing that she is able to leave the detention center and to return to her home," Mo said. "But I think she will need to seek medical treatment before she can go home."

"Her relatives have already gone to the detention center to process her departure."

But he said Gao's release isn't unconditional.

"Medical parole in this case means that she will serve the rest of her sentence outside prison," he said.

Mo said the defense team had argued in written submissions to the High Court that Gao isn't guilty, and should be released unconditionally.

"Our chief argument has been all along that the material facts of the case have not been established," he said. "There isn't enough evidence, and we wanted the High Court to change the verdict on Gao Yu to not guilty."

Outside, police threw a security cordon around the court buildings, with uniformed and plainclothes officers standing guard and preventing supporters from crossing.

Journalists from overseas media as well as reporters from Hong Kong and Macau told to stay away from the court, witnesses said.

Gao was initially sentenced to a seven-year jail term by the Beijing No. 3 Intermediate People's Court in April for "leaking state secrets overseas,” but she has denied breaking Chinese law, saying that a televised "confession" on which the prosecution based its case was obtained under duress.

Gao's lawyers and relatives have repeatedly warned of her deteriorating health during a prolonged stay in a police-run Beijing detention center.

Gao, who has had heart attacks in detention, also suffers from high blood pressure, and has signs of a lymph node growth that could be malignant, her lawyers say.

Her family and supporters say she is being held in a place where only the most basic medical facilities are available, and have repeatedly called for her release on medical parole, which is allowed under Chinese law.

Speaking before her release was announced, Gao's brother Gao Wei said the reduction in his sister's sentence wasn't a surprise.

"But I have just two things to say," he told RFA. "I stand by the case made by the lawyers, which is that she is not guilty."

"[The other is that] I want Gao Yu to get the best medical attention, as soon as possible," Gao Wei said after the appeal verdict.

Mo said he made a separate application to the court of first instance for Gao to serve the rest of her jail term in a residential setting.

"This was based on the fact that Gao is elderly and her health is failing," Mo said. "According to China's criminal procedure law, the court of first instance can decide that a custodial sentence is inappropriate in cases where the defendant has multiple health problems."

"They are able to issue an order that the sentence be served outside prison," he said.

Gao had been in a police-run detention center since her initial detention in April 2014, as she planned to mark the 26th anniversary of 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement on Tiananmen Square, which culminated in a military crackdown by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

During her November 2014 trial, Gao Yu was accused of leaking party policy Document No. 9 to a Hong Kong-based media outlet.

Document No. 9 lists "seven taboos" to be avoided in public debate, including online and in China's schools and universities, including democracy, freedom of the press, judicial independence and criticism of the party's historical record.

Her defense team argued that the document was already available online, and that the media organization in question could easily have downloaded it elsewhere.

Gao's sentencing sparked an outcry among rights groups and fellow activists, who said there was no evidence that she broke Chinese law.

Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Hai Nan for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.