Gao Zhisheng (???), a defense lawyer known for taking on politically sensitive cases and for calling on the Chinese government to end its persecution of Falun Gong, completed his three-year prison sentence for inciting subversion today. He was released from Shaya Prison in western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Gao was accompanied by his brother and taken by police escort to his father-in-law's house in Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital and Gao's place of household registration (hukou). Gao now begins his supplemental sentence of one year of deprivation of political rights (DPR). China's Criminal Law, promulgated in March 1997, stipulates that DPR sentences of 1?5 years be applied to individuals convicted of inciting subversion (which falls under the category of endangering state security) and other serious crimes. According to Chapter 3, Section 7 of the Criminal Law, people serving DPR sentences lose their rights to freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, procession, and demonstration. Two years prior to the promulgation of the Criminal Law, the Ministry of Public Security issued the "Regulations for Monitoring and Management of Offenders Subject to Public Surveillance, Deprivation of Political Rights, Suspended Sentence, Parole, or Medical Parole by Public Security Organs." The Dui Hua Foundation has translated these regulations in their entirety. Together with the relevant articles of the Criminal Law, these regulations provide the framework for how Gao Zhisheng will be monitored and managed over the next 12 months. According to the regulations, public security authorities in Urumqi (Gao's place of residence) will be responsible for monitoring and observing him during DPR. He must report periodically to police and receive their approval to travel outside Urumqi. The regulations prohibit Gao from giving interviews to journalists, and from "publishing or circulating, inside or outside China, any remarks, books, audio recordings, or other such items that damage the reputation or interests of the state or pose any other threat to society." Gao was detained on suspicion of inciting subversion on August 16, 2006, and sentenced on December 22, 2006, to three years in prison and one year deprivation of political rights by the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court. The prison sentence was suspended for five years, but shortly before that period ended, the suspension was revoked by the court on December 16, 2011. Gao was then incarcerated in remote Shaya Prison. The four months and seven days he spent in detention prior to his first trial was credited to his three-year sentence. Local public security bureaus have a high degree of discretion to establish measures targeting specific individuals during the enforcement of DPR. Given what is known about how Gao was treated during the period of his suspended sentence, portions of which were spent in Urumqi, and the current tense situation in Xinjiang arising from ethnic strife between Uyghurs and Han, it is likely that the Urumqi public security authorities will strictly implement the regulations, thereby effectively restricting Gao's personal freedom and contact with the outside world. UPDATE 14/08/2014- Gao's family alleged that he was subject to inhumane detention conditions and torture. Gao was kept in a small cell with little light and no television or reading material and was severely underfed: he lost 22.5 kilograms while in detention. Although he has been released from prison, he is under constant surveillance. UPDATE: 11/ 05/ 2015 Top Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng remains effectively under house arrest, 10 months after his release from prison on subversion charges, his family said on Wednesday.Gao, 52, is currently under 24-hour surveillance by state security police at the home of his wife's parents in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where he was released from a three-year jail term for "incitement to subvert state power" in August. While he is allowed to maintain phone contact with his family in Shaanxi province, Gao remains in Xinjiang, his brother Gao Zhiyu told RFA on Thursday."I talked to him recently and he is better now-[his physical condition] has been good for the past several weeks," Gao Zhiyu said."He can walk around the outside of the house, but he is not free[to go anywhere else]."Asked if he had plans to visit his brother, who he has not seen since his release, Gao Zhiyu said that authorities would not give him permission, "but we'll have to see what happens." According to Gao's friends, such as Beijing-based rights activist Hu Jia, the rights lawyer had barely been able to speak an entire sentence when he was first released from Xinjiang's Shaya Prison, where he had been held for lengthy periods in solitary confinement and tortured.Gao suffered psychological torture and various forms of corporal punishment, severely affecting his memory, and leaving his teeth in such bad shape that he was unable to chew, they said.Gao Zhiyu said his brother was mostly reading at home these days, while he remained under surveillance by authorities. He said he was unsure how many people were monitoring Gao at any given time. In January, Hu Jia told RFA that authorities were also monitoring Gao's phone calls, saying he was only permitted to have "brief, stilted conversations which can never touch on any deeper topics."He said at the time that Gao's family was "under the same huge political pressure that he himself is under."Gao's wife Geng He fled China with the couple's two children after her husband "disappeared" for more than a year, arriving in the United States with the couple's two children in 2009.During the Chinese New Year in February, Geng told RFA that she had tried to contact Gao, but was unsuccessful. Defending the vulnerable Once a prominent lawyer lauded by the Communist Party, Gao fell afoul of the government after he defended some of China's most vulnerable people, including Christians, coal miners and followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.In 2006, Beijing authorities arrested Gao and handed him a three-year jail term for "inciting subversion" that was later suspended for five years. But during the following five years, Gao had repeatedly suffered forced disappearances and torture. In December 2011, China's official Xinhua news agency said in a terse announcement that Gao had been imprisoned for three years for repeatedly violating his probation terms.The announcement drew strong criticism from the United Nations, United States and the European Union, all of which have repeatedly called for Gao's release, and by overseas rights groups, including Amnesty International. Geng He and fellow activists say they fear the authorities may decide to whisk Gao off into secret detention, given the sensitive nature of the cases he has defended.Since Geng's account of her husband's torture, overseas rights groups have highlighted the cases of several more Chinese activists subjected to cruel or degrading treatment while in detention.In January, the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) group, which translates and collates reports from rights groups inside China, called on the authorities to investigate complaints made by the victims' lawyers.