China: Release Lawyer Gao Zhisheng, Forcibly Disappeared Since 2017

August 13, 2025 Comments Off

Rights lawyer one of dozens of human rights defenders missing after being detained

(Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders—August 12, 2025) Ahead of the eighth anniversary of the disappearance of human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, CHRD calls on the Chinese government to clarify his whereabouts and status, and to publicly commit to ending its practice of forcibly disappearing human rights defenders. Gao has not been seen since August 2017.

An enforced disappearance is the arrest, detention, or abduction by government officials of an individual, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or the concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person. Enforced disappearances place those apprehended outside the protection of the law, leaving victims highly vulnerable to torture and ill-treatment.

“Gao Zhisheng has faced persecution for 25 years. His case has become the grim symbol of the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights abuses—systematic, persistent, and brutal,” Geng He, Gao Zhisheng’s wife and long-time advocate, told CHRD in July 2025.

In the 1990s, Gao Zhisheng became one of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers, representing members of religious communities, victims of corruption and land grabs, and free speech cases while criticizing the government’s human rights violations. Beijing authorities started persecuting him in 2005 for this work, shutting down his law firm and disbarring him. The following year he was arrested and convicted by a Beijing court on charges of “inciting subversion of state power,” and given a three-year suspended prison sentence and five years probation.

Between 2007 and 2010, Beijing and Shaanxi authorities forcibly disappeared Gao several times. In 2011, a Beijing court announced that his probation was being revoked, and he was made to serve his original three-year prison sentence. While in Shaya Prison in the Uyghur region, where he was sent to serve his sentence, Gao was tortured and mistreated; after his release in 2014 he suffered from related health complications, but was held under house arrest in Shaanxi Province, where his family are from, and denied access to adequate medical care.

On August 13, 2017, Gao attempted to escape his house arrest with the assistance of several activists, but was captured by police believed to be from Beijing and Shaanxi. Despite repeated efforts from Geng He and family members and fellow activists since that time, including raising his case at the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC), Chinese authorities have never admitted to holding Gao. His location and status remain unknown.

“Chinese authorities are legally obliged to clarify Gao Zhisheng’s whereabouts, his wellbeing, and his status, and allow him to speak to his wife,” said Sophie Richardson, Co-Executive Director of CHRD. “His lengthy disappearance and the silence that his family has endured shows Beijing’s disdain for its freely undertaken domestic and international human rights obligations.”

In October 2017, the Chinese government told independent UN human rights experts that police were investigating Gao Zhisheng’s disappearance. The United Kingdom asked about him during China’s third Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the HRC in 2018 and the European Union has consistently raised his case in HRC statements since 2018, but the government has not provided any information on his whereabouts or released him in response. Chinese government responses to the UN experts in 2020 and 2022 denied that authorities have Gao in custody, provided no information about his status, and did not include the results of an investigation. During China’s fourth UPR in 2024, Switzerland and the United States again asked for his whereabouts, which the government did not provide. In 2025, Beijing falsely claimed to the UN experts who again asked about his whereabouts that, “There are no issues of so-called ’enforced disappearance’ or ‘arbitrary detention,’” while refusing to release any information on Gao’s status.

“Our family has exhausted every avenue and resource available, yet we still have no information on his whereabouts,” Geng told CHRD in July. “We implore you to continue to search for Gao. This is a testament to whether we still have the courage and ability to defend this last line of defense for justice.”

Enforced disappearances are prohibited by customary international law and human rights treaties that the Chinese government has signed, including the Convention against Torture. Yet authorities continue to use the tactic against human rights defenders like Gao, members of religious and ethnic communities including Uyghurs and Tibetans, and, increasingly, even Chinese government officials.

According to CHRD’s Prisoners of Conscience database, there are 34 prisoners of conscience who are currently forcibly disappeared, a figure that may be low given the lack of information surrounding enforced disappearances. Some cases include:

Activist Peng Lifa was forcibly disappeared after being detained in October 2022 for his Beijing bridge protest, before credible reports emerged in July 2025 that he had been sentenced to nine years for “arson” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and moved to an unknown prison two months prior. As the government has not confirmed his whereabouts or status, Peng is still forcibly disappeared.

In February 2025, Thailand deported a group of approximately 40 Uyghurs detained for over a decade to China. UN experts raised concern that following their repatriation many family members abroad had not been able to contact them or receive information on their whereabouts, potentially constituting enforced disappearance. The UN had previously raised concern over the scale of enforced disappearances in the Uyghur region and that the Chinese government’s policies in the region may constitute crimes against humanity.

In July 2024, a young activist named Fang Yirong unfurled a banner on a footbridge in Hunan, replicating Peng Lifa’s 2022 Beijing bridge protest. Fang Yirong has been missing in police custody since his protest.

Swedish writer Gui Minhai was sentenced to 10 years in prison in February 2020, and there has been no information on his conditions or whereabouts since. In 2015 he was kidnapped from Thailand and reappeared in China three months later.

Gedhun Choekyi Nyima has been missing for 30 years after the Dalai Lama named the then-six-year-old the 11^th Panchen Lama, the second highest religious authority in Tibetan Buddhism. The boy and his parents were taken from their home by Chinese authorities in May 1995. Authorities said in 2001 that the family was in “protective custody” but claimed to the UN in 2020 that the family is living “normal lives” and not in detention, a claim which cannot be independently verified.

“Beijing should mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on August 30 by releasing Gao Zhisheng and all people forcibly disappeared,” Richardson said. “Such a step would show genuine respect for human rights and the rule of law.”

For more information, please contact:

Sophie Richardson, Co-Executive Director, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, sophierichardson@nchrd.org, +1 917 721 7473

Angeli Datt, Research and Advocacy Coordinator, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, angelidatt@nchrd.org, +1 934 444 6155

Shane Yi, Researcher, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, shaneyi@nchrd.org