The Executive Officer s Column Speaking Out for Human Rights Major media outlets have covered the situation of Dr. Gao Zhan, American University scholar, who was detained in China on February 11. Knowledge of this arrest first became public on March 22. Dr. Li was detained on February 25, and Dr. Xu last fall. All three sociologists are dedicated to scholarly work on academic subjects that bring them to do research in China.
All reports appear to confirm that they are legitimate scholars conducting scientific research.
As of this writing, only Dr. Gao has subsequently been charged with spying for foreign intelligence agencies, but the Chinese government has offered no evidence to support this claim. ASA has expressed itself in the strongest possible terms since the news of Dr. Gao first reached us in March. We sent a second letter on April 2 in collaboration with Human Rights Watch and the New York Academy of Sciences on behalf of Drs. Gao, Li, and Xu. For a scientific society like ASA, it is a fundamental value and responsibility of our body to speak out in the face of human rights violations of scholars and other infringements on the capacity of sociologists to pursue their ideas and present their work free of constraints.