Gao, a reporter and columnist, was detained by Beijing police in April 2014 and charged with illegally providing state secrets abroad. On April 17, 2015, Beijing’s No. 3 Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Gao to seven years in prison. Soon after, Gao lodged an appeal with the Beijing Higher People’s Court. She was awaiting trial as of August, according to The Associated Press.
Gao Yu was released on November 26, 2015 on medical parole after her sentence was reduced from seven to five years on appeal, according to news reports.
Pressuncuffed.org seeks to encourage and promote rigorous student reporting, scholarly research and debate on the role of, and obstacles to, independent journalism in the United States and abroad. Our website features reporting by University of Maryland students about press freedom in the United States and abroad. It also offers resources to instructors elsewhere who may want to teach classes or hold workshops on this theme. In the near future, this site will become a place for student work from around the country and abroad.
Dana Priest, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner at The Washington Post and Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Maryland.