okay it's current events time! i spent like 5 minutes trying to choose a topic from the news sites i frequent, but i didn't really care or know anything about any of the articles i saw, so i gave up. then i remembered gao zhisheng! this topic is amazing & heart-wrenching, so i'm going to write about it. okay here's the deal:
gao zhisheng is a worldwide-acclaimed Christian human rights attorney in china. apparently china doesn't really like human rights attorneys, because they point out the government's flaws & ask them to change. in the past, gao zhisheng has been harassed, kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured for his work. at the beginning of this year (feb 2009), shortly after gao zhisheng released the account of a gruesome 50-day torture he endured in a chinese prison, he disappeared, and no one has seen him since.
there's a huge outcry because of this - it turns out that the chinese government took him (surprise!), and after 11 months, they still won't give information about his condition, except that he is alive. reading the account of his previous
50-day torture in their hands raises a lot of concern for his current condition. it's been 305 days now!
gao zhisheng's family has been granted asylum in the US, and many people are working to free him. you can read the
full story at Christianity today, and you can find more information + ways you can help on the "
help free gao zhisheng" website.
chinese people are awesome, and they don't deserve this suffering. i'm reading a book called "safely home" right now that talks about the persecution of Christians and "prisoners" in china, and i'm almost tempted to disbelieve what i'm reading because it's so extreme. ignoring sad truths doesn't make them go away though.
this post is about a sad truth - you can ignore it, but it won't make it go away!