Gao Zhisheng

Gao Zhisheng is a Chinese human rights attorney and dissident known for defending activists and religious minorities and documenting human rights abuses in China. Because of his work, Zhisheng has been disbarred and detained by the Chinese government several times, and severely tortured. He disappeared in February 2009 and was unofficially detained until December 2011, when it was announced that he had been imprisoned for three years. His commitment to defending his clients is influenced by his Christian beliefs and their tenets on morality and compassion. Gao's memoir, A China More Just (2007), documents his "fight as a rights lawyer in the world's largest communist state." In subsequent writing, he accuses the ruling Chinese Communist Party of state-sponsored torture and reports having been tortured by the Chinese secret police. At the beginning of 2012, Gao's brother said he had received a court document saying his brother was in Shayar jail in Xinjiang. In 2014, it was reported that Gao was released from jail and put under house arrest. He disappeared again in August 2017 in an apparent attempt to escape house arrest and was subsequently taken back into custody on his recapture in September, with his whereabouts being unknown. As of January 2025, Gao remains disappeared.