Advocacy Group Urges China to Lift Exit Bans on 7-Year-Old and His Mother

‘The Chinese government must stop persecuting the Gao family,’ John Kamm, executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation, said.

A guard looks through the window of a hallway inside a detention center in Beijing, China, on Oct. 25, 2012. Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

A Chinese mother and her U.S.-born young child are being barred from leaving China after a family trip there last year, marking another case where Beijing has stopped foreigners and Chinese nationals from departing the country.

On Aug. 7, the Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco-based advocacy group for at-risk detainees in China, raised the plight of the Gao family—permanent U.S. residents Gao Zhen and his wife Zhao Yaliang, and their seven-year-old son, Gao Jia, a U.S. citizen from New York.

The senior Gao and his younger brother, Gao Qiang, are well-known as the “Gao Brothers” for their artworks critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). One particularly well-known art piece is a bronze statue of former CCP leader Mao Zedong kneeling, his right hand on his chest with a sorrowful expression.

In August last year, Gao Zhen was detained on the charge of “slandering China’s heroes and martyrs” during a family trip. The foundation pointed out that the charge was based on the Heroes and Martyrs Protection Law, which went into effect in 2018, even though his artworks mocking the Chinese regime’s leadership were created before 2009.

Zhao and her son have been barred from leaving China since the senior Gao’s arrest. The foundation questioned why Beijing chose to impose the exit ban on them, noting that neither has been accused of a crime nor is required for any criminal investigation by the Chinese authorities.

Unable to return to the United States, the seven-year-old Gao “has been unable to attend school for a full year,” the foundation added.

“It’s one thing to slap exit bans on adult Americans like bankers or government employees, it’s an entirely different matter to impose an exit ban on a young child,” John Kamm, executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation, said in a statement.

Last month, the Chinese regime announced that it had imposed an exit ban on Mao Chenyue, an Atlanta-based managing director at Wells Fargo, accusing the banker of being “involved in a criminal case.”

Also in July, the U.S. State Department confirmed that a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office employee was being prevented from leaving China after traveling there in a personal capacity.

In September last year, the foundation estimated that there were “more than 300 Americans under coercive measures in China,” and “more than 30 are under exit bans.”

The foundation stated that China’s treatment of the younger Gao violates the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which China signed in 1990 and ratified two years later.

As for the senior Gao, the foundation stated that he is scheduled to be tried and sentenced “in the coming weeks,” and warned that he could receive a long sentence, despite his not guilty plea.

“Charging someone with a crime that was not a crime at the time the alleged offense took place,” Kamm said, “is a violation of a fundamental principle of justice, the principle of non-retroactive application of the law.”

“The Chinese government must stop persecuting the Gao family. It must free Gao Zhen and lift the exit bans on Gao Jia and his mother and allow them to return to the United States.”

New York-based nonprofit, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), sent a letter dated Oct. 31 last year to the consulate general of China in New York, demanding the senior Gao’s immediate and unconditional release.

The letter, written by HRF Chief Advocacy Officer Roberto González, argued that his artworks “are incredibly necessary to educating the world on the truth of Mao’s dictatorial legacy.”

Mao instigated the Red Guards, who were Chinese high school and university students, to persecute those identified as “class enemies” of the communist regime, amid the Cultural Revolution that lasted 10 years until Mao’s death in 1976.

González also argued that Beijing should repeal the Heroes and Martyrs Protection Law to “safeguard artistic freedom in China.”

“His detention is not just a violation of his rights but a blatant abuse of power and an attack on the fundamental human freedoms of all Chinese people who have the right to learn the truth about dictator Mao Zedong,” the letter reads.