Boxun and Mirror News Websites’ Symposium: Appeal for Release of Chinese Independent Journalist Gao Yu

New York—Chinese independent journalist Gao Yu is suspected by the authorities of the crime of revealing state secrets to foreigners. She’s been imprisoned for more than four months and her case has already been turned over to the procuratorate for prosecution. On Monday September 8 a group of Gao Yu’s friends and supporters gathered together in New York to send her their regards on the Mid-Autumn Festival. They discussed how they could help win her earliest possible release and called on the Chinese authorities not to find her guilty and sentence her.

Yesterday the Mirror News and Boxun Websites Symposium on Gao Yu’s case was held in Flushing, New York. The principal statement of the meeting is that Gao Yu is China’s most internationally well-known independent journalist. Her arrest has already harmed the reputation of Xi Jinping’s regime. If she is convicted and sentenced before the fourth plenary session of the 18th Communist Party Central Committee, it will be a big loss for the Chinese Communist Party.

Conference participants included Gao Yu’s friends from the 1980s student movement including those who worked with her at “Economic Weekly” newspaper Wang Juntao and Chen Xiaoping, “Beijing Spring” Editor-in-Chief Hu Ping, Gao Yu’s People’s University classmates Liao Jia’an and Guo Baosheng, former “China Reform” magazine director Li Weidong (who visited New York with Gao Yu last year), and He Pin and Wei Shi, the editors of Mirror News and Boxun overseas Chinese-language websites who have published many of Gao Yu’s articles in recent years.