Roundup - 16/01/2010

• Gao Zhisheng, a prominent advocate of religious freedom, has 'gone missing' his family have said. Gao Zhisheng was detained on the 4^th February 2009 and was believed to be in police custody. However, an officer told his brother that he 'lost his way and went missing.'
  
  Gao Zhisheng, a former soldier and coal miner, came to prominence as a dissident after representing underground Christian churches and helping to organise a hunger strike by Falun Gong supporters. He had previously been in custody in 2007 during which time he said he was tortured with electric batons and toothpicks through his testicles.
  
  Geng He, Gao's wife, said in her new home of New York that she was stunned by the news that the authorities did not know the whereabouts of her husband. She has asked the authorities, 'if he's alive, let us see him, if he's dead, tell us where the body is.'
  
  
  
• China has criticised the plans of five Hong Kong legislators to resign en-masse to provoke a 'referendum' on democratic reform. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council has said that any referendum would be a violation of the Basic Law. Hong Kong's Chief Executive, Donald Tsang, has also come out strongly against the move saying that the Hong Kong government would not recognise it.
  
  The legislators, members of the opposition Civic Party and League of Social Democrats, are heavily critical of the delays to universal suffrage which have been imposed from Beijing with the support of the Hong Kong government. They plan to resign on January 27^th.
  
  
  
• Police in Beijing shut down China's first gay pageant an hour before it was due to start. The Mr Gay China pageant was supposed to be a sign of China's gradual acceptance of homosexuals. Homosexuality was a crime until 1997 and classified as a mental disorder until 2001. Since then public homosexuality and gay bars and clubs have slowly been growing in China's cities. However, the closing of this pageant shows how far China still has to go.
  
  Police said that the event was cancelled because of inadequate paperwork, although they are said to have commented that the pageant was a 'sensitive issue.'