On this episode of China Uncensored:
A 14-old-girl was monitored by Chinese police 24/7—
at home, at school, even in the shower.
Her crime?
You'll find out when we talk to her.
Hi, welcome back to China Uncensored.
I'm your host Chris Chappell.
Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng was once
celebrated in China for fighting against injustice.
In fact, he was named one of the top ten lawyers in China
by the Chinese government.
But they suddenly changed their minds after Gao
started going after the biggest source of injustice in China:
the Chinese government.
Or more accurately,
the Chinese Communist Party.
Authorities shut down Gao's law firm,
suspended his license,
and spent the next few years imprisoning and torturing Gao
and putting his family under house arrest.
Yes, China is a country with rule of law.
Also, war is peace.
Earlier this week, the China Uncensored team
was at the Oslo Freedom Forum in New York,
a gathering of activists around the world
who are standing up to authoritarian regimes,
like the Chinese Communist Party.
One of those activists was Gao Zhisheng's daughter, Grace Gao.
She sat down with Shelley to discuss her father's work
and her own experiences under house arrest in China.
Thank you so much for being here, Grace.
We really appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
Can you just tell us a little bit about
what you remember about your father?
He's a very loving person,
and he has a lots of love towards other people,
and he always want to share his love.
He always wanted to help.
And that's how I remember him.
He was, you know, considered one of the best,
10 best lawyers in China.
Why did he care so much about his work?
I think the main reason is he was born in poverty,
and he was raised in poverty,
and he knows how difficult for poor people that were like,
you know, those poor people to live,
to make a living in China,
and he always wanted to help those people out.
And he says the main problem is the government.
It's the system.
So I think that's what he devoted to do.
That's what he wanted to do.
In the beginning, he was helping a lot of these like vulnerable people,
and it seemed like he was being celebrated for it,
but then suddenly it seemed like the government was targeting him.
Do you know why that happened?
I think he reached to the core.
He was writing open letters to the government,
and he was taking sensitive cases,
political sensitive cases in China.
Like persecutions of Falun Gong practitioners.
The persecutions of Christians.
I think he touched some topics that the government
will never allow anybody to touch it.
But he dared to do it anyway?
Yeah.
You were quite young when this was happening.
Do you remember any of this?
I was 14.
Everything started when I was 13, 14.
It was a chaos.
There were, when they kidnapped my father,
he was almost never in the picture.
So it was eight secret agent lived in our apartment.
They take shifts, three times...eight hours shift.
And then there were 20, 30, 40 more secret agents
outside of that apartment,in the community.
They were just constantly observing me, my brother, and my mom.
They were writing down everything, every activities that we did.
So at the time, your dad, they had already taken your dad away?
Yes.
Why were they in your house?
They never gave us a reason, even though we kept asking them,
but I guess they ... I'm guessing they don't want me or my mom
reaching out to medias, telling the world what's happening.
I guess that's a reason.
Or maybe they're just scared.
Were they watching you 24/7?
Yes.
They were watching us 24/7.
They had a notebook.
They were writing down everything that we did, like,
"Grace woke up at 7:00 a.m. and she took a shower,"
those kinds of things.
They were watching everything, even the bathroom.
Do you think they were trying to scare you?
Yes, I do.
What about when you went to school?
They wouldn't let me go to school for a long period of time,
until they finally released my father.
My father fought for my rights to go to school,
and then they were like, "Yes, we can let you go to school,
but there's one condition."
The eight secret agents are following me at all times.
They were sitting outside of the classroom,
and they're tearing down the doors of the bathroom,
and they had to watch everything that I did.
It was really uncomfortable.
It sounds really traumatic, actually.
Very traumatic.
They banned all the students at my school,
they cannot bring a cell phone to school.
Just think about it.
They're all teenagers.
They're all having their relationships with their lovers or whatever,
and they can't bring a cell phone.
The principal and the teachers are announcing this
publicly in my school that nobody can talk to me,
otherwise their parents will be jailed like my father.
It sounds like you had a terrible time at school.
Very terrible.
Did the teachers also not talk to you?
Well, she did.
She did in a bad way,
so that everybody else would hate me.
Why did you have to be hated?
Because I think that's their goal,
to make me a bad person, to make me a target
so that everybody would hate on me,
so that I would feel even more terrible.
How did you get through that?
I just kept telling myself that,
"I'm undergoing all of this because of my father,
but I know my father, deep in my heart, he is a good man.
I don't know the reason why they took him,
but I do know he's a good man."
I just kept telling myself,
"I need to survive.
I need to be with my family.
I need to be there for them,"
because at the time, my mom, she's not eating at all.
She's really angry, and she keeps asking them,
"Why are you doing this to our family?"
They denied to give her any reasons,
so she is super upset.
She refused to eat for a long period of time.
My brother was a baby at the time, two years old, three years old.
I think I had to be the rock of my family.
That's a lot of pressure for a 14-year-old.
Yeah.
When your dad was back,
were the secret agents still watching your family?
Yes, but not in the apartment, but still.
It was more people, outside of the apartment.
Did you ever talk to your father about what was happening?
I didn't.
I didn't want him to worry,
because I can see all the scars on his back.
I didn't want him to worry,
so I didn't tell him what was really going on.
I suppose he suffered more.
When did your mom decide to take you out of China?
To be honest, I didn't know when she had the idea,
but it was 2009, January, the 9th of January.
That morning, she took us to flee from China.
How old were you?
I was 16.
Two years of your family being under constant surveillance.
How did you feel about leaving?
Sad, because that morning, everything was normal.
Somehow, my dad wants to hug us.
My dad hugged my brother really tight
and then hugged my mom really tight.
He gave me a really, really tight hug,
and then he kisses me on the forehead.
I knew something was wrong, but in my family,
we don't talk freely.
We never know there are cameras or anything in the rooms,
so we don't talk freely.
I can tell there is something wrong,
and then my mom just took us away.
Did you know where you were going?
No.
You eventually made it to America.
Yeah.
Can you tell us a little bit about
how you got to America from China?
Not really.
I can't give out much details,
because there are still people using the same method
and the same people we used to flee from China.
I think it's much better that I don't say anything.
Essentially, people helped you,
helped smuggle you out of the country.
Yes.
What was it like to come to America?
It was a lot of adjustments.
It was very difficult.
We had to make a living, and we had to keep on living.
At the same time, we had to do a lot of work for my father.
We're aware there's an attentions on his case.
It's been tough.
It's been tough, and it's been good.
How is your life in America now?
Pretty good.
Just graduated,
and I went to travel for a couple months by myself.
I learned how to dive.
I even go on meditation underwater,
so it's pretty good.
It's pretty peaceful.
That's quite different, hm?
Yeah.
Do you feel like Americans understand
what's happening in China right now?
Not really.
I mean, yes and no.
Of course, America understands how worsened the situation is,
the human rights situation is in China, but they can't do anything.
They can't do too much about it,
because of the economic factors and the other factors.
So yes and no.
After your mom brought you guys to America,
did you lose contact with your father?
Yeah, right away.
Almost right away.
I forgot how long was that, but two years after,
we remained in contact for, I don't know, a couple weeks.
Then he was off, and then he somehow appeared,
and then he was off.
It's just like this, on and off, on and off.
We're kind of used to this.
When is the last time you talked to your father?
A year ago.
Did you talk on the phone?
Yes.
Usually, we call.
My father is located in a small village where he was born.
It's in Shaanxi province.
He is under house arrest.
Usually, we call his big brother.
If he's around, the big brother will call him to talk to us.
If he's not, then it's bad luck.
We can't talk to him that day.
Sometimes, my father will carry the cell phone
and climb up to the mountains to get a better signal to talk to us,
but it's kind of useless, because everything we talk about, they...
The Chinese government sees this as politically sensitive,
so they usually just cut it off.
They can actually cut off your-
Pretty often, actually.
They cut off the phone pretty often, so that we know,
"Oh, we reached into some sensitive topics."
Sensitive topics like, "How are you doing, dad?"
Yes, that's the main question.
Every time when I ask him,
"How are you?
Is your health okay?
Are you feeling good?"
they cut off the line.
Those kinds of questions, my father cannot answer.
That sounds incredible.
Yeah.
You haven't even been able to do this for a year, right?
Mm-hmm.
Do you know where your father is now?
No.
It's been a year.
We don't know where he is.
Does that mean he is probably in a prison somewhere?
I think he must be under house arrest or something,
but we don't know the location.
The Chinese government, they denied that they have him,
but it's almost a sure answer that they have him, so yeah.
Have you ever thought about what it would be like
to go back to China?
Actually, I tried.
I tried a couple times,
but I was denied to get my visa.
I had my internship in January in Hong Kong this year.
I also tried to get my visa from Hong Kong,
and I was denied, too.
Do you feel, then, safe in the U.S.?
Do you feel like they know who you are,
the Chinese government?
Are they still interested in you,
since they denied you your visa to go back?
Yeah.
That's why I was telling you that
I don't like to have topics about China.
I don't talk about it.
It makes me feel safer.
It makes me feel like I am not exposed, myself, too much.
Because in my father's book, Stand Up China 2017,
he said the secret agents are telling him that they have
people around us in America to watch our lives,
so they can give my father some information to update.
"We want you to surrender, because your family in America,
they are doing really poorly," this kind of thing.
We tend to not expose ourselves too much
because we don't feel that safe.
Have you actually had problems directly?
Not really, but it's just we're very alert.
It's pretty tragic that even thousands of miles away,
the Chinese government can still make you feel unsafe
and make your father feel threatened.
Have you thought about what you will say to your dad
the next time you see him?
No.
No.
I almost never thought about this question,
because he is very stubborn, in a way.
He refused to come to America.
He thinks China is his battleground.
He has to stay there.
He has to stay there for people to know
that there are somebody fighting for human rights and justice.
There are people fighting for them in the dark.
I don't know when I will be able to see him,
so this question is ...
I almost never thought about it.
Is there anything that people can do
outside China to help your dad?
I think if you pray, please pray for him.
I think it's important for people who are outside of China
to know that not just my father,
not just the individual case,
but there are a bigger problem behind it.
It's the system.
It's the Communists.
It's the system.
In a thousand ways, it's still wrong.
Thank you so much for talking to us today, Grace.
Thank you.
I want to give a special thanks
to the staff at the Oslo Freedom Forum
who put us in touch with Grace Gao,
and helped us set up this interview.
Oh, and thanks to Shelley for actually doing this interview
and to Grace for being willing to talk with us.
Over the next couple of weeks,
we'll have even more interviews we shot at the Oslo Freedom Forum.
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