The Human Rights Foundation has submitted a complaint to a United Nations body that reviews detention cases on behalf of Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen, seeking a finding that his prolonged detention is arbitrary under international law.
Gao, 69, was arrested in China in 2024 on “suspicion of slandering China’s heroes and martyrs,” a charge tied to his longstanding sculptural practice repurposing art historical icons to challenge official narratives and mythmaking. That year, more than 100 artworks were seized during a police raid on his studio in Sanhe City, China, including ones such as Miss Mao, Mao’s Guilt and The Execution of Christ, which critique the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarianism and censorship.
As the Human Rights Foundation noted in its April petition to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the three works were all created at least nine years before China’s 2021 law prohibiting “slandering” its “heroes” and “martyrs” was enacted.
“Applying it retroactively to criminalize Zhen’s artwork shows the lengths to which the CCP is willing to go to silence dissent,” the organization said in a statement. “Gao Zhen’s trial, delayed three times, took place in a single day on March 30, 2026, suggesting his guilt had been predetermined. He is still awaiting a verdict.”
The Human Rights Foundation’s petition to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention outlines a series of alleged human rights violations in Gao’s case, including prolonged solitary confinement, the “retroactive application of a vague and overly broad law,” and denial of medical care.
In October 2025, Human Rights Watch called on the Chinese government to drop the “baseless charges” against Gao—a permanent US resident—adding that he is in “poor health” and fainted the previous month. According to Gao’s brother and artistic collaborator, Gao Qiang, Chinese authorities seized sculptures, paintings, and photographs during the raid, including a sculptural series depicting Mao variably as a woman with breasts and kneeling on the ground, as well as a depiction of a Chinese firing squad aiming at Jesus Christ.
The Human Rights Foundation accused Chinese authorities of denying medical care to the jailed artist, who has reportedly been deemed at risk for a stroke and suffers from chronic back pain, and of confining him at least once to “a crowded 40‑square‑meter cell with 14 other detainees.”
Following his arrest, 181 artists, writers, activists, and intellectuals from China signed a petition urging his release. In the letter, they drew parallels between the current government under President Xi and Mao’s. During the Cultural Revolution, the Gao Brothers’ father was accused of being a “counter-revolutionary” and died in detention.
“The Gao Brothers’ father tragically lost his life during that time, and their family has yet to receive any explanation or justice,” reads the petition. “Today, the Sanhe Public Security Bureau has labeled Gao Zhen’s artistic creations as evidence of a crime, repeating the persecutions of the Cultural Revolution.”
