September 12, 2026 — Chinese human-rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng has now been missing for more than nine years, with his whereabouts and condition still unknown. A rights-monitoring account circulating this week marked 3,318 days since his disappearance.
Gao disappeared from his home in Shaanxi on August 13, 2017. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom continues to list his current status as unknown and his most recent type of abuse as disappeared, stating that his exact whereabouts and condition remain unknown.
Gao became internationally known for representing Christians, Falun Gong practitioners and other people facing rights abuses. Before his latest disappearance, he had already experienced imprisonment, incommunicado detention and reported torture connected to his legal and human-rights work.
Nine years without a verifiable answer
Recent public campaigns have again asked a basic question: Where is Gao Zhisheng? Rights advocates have called for disclosure of his whereabouts, his physical condition and restoration of contact with his family.
Free China Movement’s existing unresolved-case record notes that authoritative sources continue to report Gao’s fate or whereabouts as unknown. This report therefore does not claim a current prison, detention site, custody authority, health condition, release, injury or death without verifiable evidence.
An unresolved enforced-disappearance case
USCIRF describes Gao as remaining forcibly disappeared for his work defending human rights and religious minorities. Its record dates his disappearance to August 13, 2017 and lists his current status as unknown. The case remains a stark example of why enforced disappearance is itself a profound human-rights concern: families and the public are denied even the most basic verifiable information about a person’s fate.
Reader Action
Like · Take Action · Share · Save to My Account. Readers can ask elected representatives, democratic governments and international human-rights institutions to press for verifiable disclosure of Gao Zhisheng’s whereabouts and condition, direct family contact, access to independent legal counsel, and his freedom if he remains in state custody.
Related record: Gao Zhisheng — unresolved disappearance and unknown whereabouts.