FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — September 12, 2026
Free China Movement demands that the Mainland Chinese Communist Government immediately provide verifiable information concerning human-rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng’s whereabouts, physical condition and legal status.
More than nine years have passed since Gao disappeared on August 13, 2017. USCIRF continues to list his current status as unknown and describes him as forcibly disappeared. His exact whereabouts and condition remain unknown.
Nine years without a verifiable accounting is intolerable. A government cannot erase a human being by withholding his location, condition and access to his family.
Free China Movement calls on the Mainland Chinese Communist Government to disclose Gao Zhisheng’s present whereabouts and condition; permit direct and independently verifiable contact with his family; provide access to independent legal counsel; clarify the legal basis for any continuing custody; and release him immediately if he remains deprived of liberty for the peaceful exercise of fundamental rights.
We further call on the United States, democratic governments, the United Nations and international human-rights institutions to continue raising Gao’s case publicly and to seek verifiable answers rather than accepting silence as resolution.
Gao became known for representing Christians, Falun Gong practitioners and others facing rights abuses. His case represents something larger than one lawyer: enforced disappearance attacks the rule of law by placing a person beyond ordinary public accountability and leaving a family without reliable knowledge of his fate.
Where is Gao Zhisheng? After more than nine years, this basic question still requires an answer.
Reader Action
Like · Take Action · Share · Save to My Account. Ask your elected representatives to demand verifiable disclosure of Gao Zhisheng’s whereabouts and condition and to press for his freedom if he remains in state custody.
Background: FreeChina.live — Gao Zhisheng unresolved-case record.