China dissident-lawyer Gao jailed in far west: brother

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

01/02/2012

China dissident-lawyer Gao jailed in far west: brother

BEIJING | Sun Jan 1, 2012 10:30pm EST

(Reuters) - Chinese authorities have jailed the prominent dissident-lawyer Gao Zhisheng in the remote far west, his brother said Monday, the first confirmation of Gao's whereabouts in nearly two years in a case that has fanned criticism about secretive detentions.

Gao has been imprisoned in the Shaya County Prison in Xinjiang region on charges of "inciting subversion of state power," his brother, Gao Zhiyi, told Reuters by telephone from his home in Shaanxi province, citing a court notice.

"Now we finally know where he is, I hope we can visit him in a few days, but it's a long way to travel," said Gao Zhiyi.

The court notice amounted to the clearest information of Gao Zhisheng's location since April 2010, when he briefly made contact with friends and foreign reporters after being held in secretive detention for more than a year.

Read more at REUTERS

Jan 2, 2012 4:13:57 PM | Activist/Dissident, Current Affairs

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