25 Years Since Eritrea Dissolved Civic Space, HRF Demands Release of Chinese Pastors, Free Gao Zhen, and more

The families of China’s prisoners of conscience are still waiting for their loved ones to come home. Among them is Cherie Geng, whose husband, Pastor Gao Yingjia, has been arbitrarily detained for nearly a year.

Pastor Gao Yingjia was among the Zion Church members seized in one of China’s largest crackdowns on Christians in nearly a decade. Eight Zion church leaders remain detained, and Chinese officials have signaled that they could face sentences of more than 10 years.

After Chinese police took her husband in the middle of the night, Cherie fled China with their 6-year-old son. In Thailand, she has had to build a new life while working to secure Yingjia’s release.

Cherie now helps organize the families of other detained church members, coordinating calls, communicating with lawyers, and keeping attention on their cases. Her son still prays for his father to come home.

The cases of China’s prisoners of conscience should not be forgotten. HRF calls for the immediate release of Pastor Gao Yingjia and the other detained Zion Church members. #ReleaseThem

HRF is calling for the release of Gao Zhen — the 70-year-old Chinese dissident artist and US permanent resident sentenced last month to 3 years in prison for satirical sculptures.

HRF’s new profile tells his story: A member of the acclaimed “Gao Brothers” duo, Gao was arrested in August 2024 — days before a planned return home to the United States — over three works created from 2006 to 2009.

The law he was charged under didn’t exist until 2018, a decade after the sculptures were made. Prosecutors got around that by treating later images and reproductions of the works as the “crime.”

Gao Zhen was 12 when his father died in custody during the Cultural Revolution. Now, the same system has put him behind bars: 581 days of pretrial detention, a closed-door trial his wife and son were barred from attending, and no end date on the exit ban keeping his family in China. But even in detention, he keeps making art — portraits of his son torn by hand from paper.

Gao Zhen must be released immediately and unconditionally, and safely reunited with his family. #ReleaseThem

HRF and 28 other NGOs, including @CHRDnet, @theCFHK, and @hrichina, have a clear message for Xi Jinping: Release all prisoners of conscience, end transnational repression, and repeal the abusive laws behind these crackdowns.

Xi and Trump are also expected to meet at APEC and G20 convenings later this year. Our joint letter points out a troubling precedent — during Xi’s 2023 APEC visit to San Francisco, peaceful demonstrators were harassed, intimidated, and violently assaulted by pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) actors — and asks Xi to commit that his delegation will refrain from any such repression while on US soil.

How Beijing treats its critics and ethnic groups — inside its borders and far beyond them — lays bare how the party-state wields authoritarian power. HRF and fellow signatories stand in solidarity with every community the Chinese government unjustly targets, and will keep monitoring and exposing the CCP’s human rights violations. #ReleaseThem

Xi Jinping is meeting President Trump this week. While Xi is in town, HRF is calling for the release of Pastor Gao Quanfu and his wife Pang Yu — elderly Chinese Christians jailed in a crackdown on unregistered house churches.

In The Diplomat, their son @GaoPu1231 prays for “one more miracle”: His father, a pastor of 40 years, faces 12 to 13 years on fraud charges tied to voluntary church donations. His mother was arrested weeks later, simply out of association. Their trials are approaching.

They are held in overcrowded conditions with little family or legal contact, inadequate food, and untreated health problems.

Pastor Ezra Jin was freed this July after the world rallied behind his case. The same is possible for Pastor Gao Quanfu and Pang Yu. They must be released immediately and unconditionally, and safely reunited with their family. #ReleaseThem