World
Gao Zhen, Detained Chinese Artist, Keeps Creating From Prison
For the wife, Zhao Yaliang, the pictures are visual love letters from her husband, the imprisoned artist Gao Zhen.
Mr. Gao is in a Chinese detention center, awaiting trial and almost certain conviction on charges that he broke a law against slandering the country’s heroes and martyrs, according to Ms. Zhao. He is being prosecuted for irreverent sculptures of the revolutionary leader Mao Zedong that he made more than 15 years ago, before the law even existed.
Mr. Gao, 69, is part of a generation of avant-garde Chinese artists that achieved international fame in the 2000s. While he later emigrated to the United States, Mr. Gao was detained in August 2024 at his studio on the outskirts of Beijing when he and his family visited China.
The authorities have since blocked Ms. Zhao, a writer and photographer, from leaving the country. She and their son, who is a U.S. citizen, have been stuck in China for over a year. The State Department said in a statement that the United States was “deeply concerned” about Mr. Gao’s arrest and the restrictions placed on Ms. Zhao. “We strongly oppose any exit ban that prevents a U.S. citizen child from departing China,” it said.
Speaking by video chat, Ms. Zhao, 47, says that while in detention, her husband wrote letters and made some 80 of these hand-torn pictures — a version of the traditional folk art of Chinese paper cutting, or jianzhi.
“He’s telling me to take better care of myself and our son,” she said, pointing to an image of a woman with two streaks running down her face — a portrait of herself weeping.
Mr. Gao faces up to three years in prison for acts that “damage the reputation” of Chinese heroes and martyrs.
His arrest under that law, which was passed in 2018, is testimony to how much the space for expression has shrunk in China. In the early 2000s, he and his younger brother Gao Qiang held secret exhibitions in Beijing and got away with taking on taboo topics like the 1966-76 decade of political turmoil known as the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in the death of their father, and the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. Known as the Gao brothers, the duo were seen as cultural ambassadors to the West, representing a China that was more willing to face its past.
In today’s China, that kind of reckoning has become nearly impossible, as the leader Xi Jinping has overseen a crackdown on the questioning of official narratives. The law against slandering martyrs and heroes has also been used to punish journalists, stand-up comedians and regular citizens making comments online.
Mr. Gao was arrested for three provocative sculptures of Mao Zedong that he made with his brother. In one, the revolutionary is depicted with breasts and a Pinocchio nose; in another, a group of Chairman Maos with guns prepare to execute Jesus Christ. The third, called “Mao’s Guilt,” portrays the former leader, who was responsible for years of famine and upheaval, kneeling in repentance.
“Mao Zedong has been dead for nearly half a century, yet his ghost still haunts China, harming Chinese people,” said Mr. Gao’s brother, who also emigrated to New York. He said the Chinese authorities had arrested Mr. Gao merely for doing his job as an artist.
“This humiliation,” the brother said, “torments me every day.”
The trigger for Mr. Gao’s detention may not have been his art but his decision to move to the United States. He and his family relocated from Beijing to New York in 2022, joining his brother and other government critics who have been driven away by Mr. Xi’s crackdown and severe pandemic-era controls.
When his mother-in-law became ill last year, his wife decided to return for a visit. Mr. Gao insisted on joining her and their son, even though friends warned it could be dangerous. He wanted to revive their work studio and argued he was not important enough for the police to bother with. As a permanent U.S. resident Mr. Gao had traveled back and forth between China and the United States without issue for the last decade.
But on the morning of Aug. 26, almost three months after he had returned to China, more than 30 police stormed Mr. Gao’s art studio in Sanhe City in Hebei Province, near Beijing. Four of the officers grabbed Ms. Zhao, forcing her and their son into the kitchen. She tried to comfort their son as they watched officers pin her husband to a couch and handcuff him.
“Now with him being taken away, I realize that we were always living on the edge of a cliff,” Ms. Zhao said.
Victoria Zhang, a friend of the Gao brothers and president of Kunlun Press and the Borderless Culture and Art Center in New York, believes the Chinese authorities want to make an example of Mr. Gao to silence others who have moved overseas.
“Don’t assume that just because you’ve fled abroad, the Chinese Communist Party can’t touch you. The moment you return home they will punish you,” Ms. Zhang said.
Ms. Zhao later attempted to return to New York with her son but was stopped at the airport in Beijing by officials who said she was not allowed to leave on national security grounds. When she tried to go to the U.S. Embassy for help, the two were intercepted by police and taken back to Sanhe City.
“It’s the strategy they always use — controlling your family to get you to confess quickly,” she said. Despite this, she says her husband will not plead guilty.
She and their son are staying in an apartment in Sanhe City, where they lead an existence in limbo. While Jia longs for New York, where he went by the name of Justin, Ms. Zhao tries to keep his life as normal as possible. After he missed the first semester of first grade, the police found a local school for him to enroll in. The mother and son’s days are now filled with school and after-school activities, and her attempts to limit his screen time. They spend weekends in the 798 Art District in Beijing, where the Gao brothers once held exhibitions.
Still, she worries about the trauma her son has experienced. For a time, he refused to leave her side, and he still wakes up at night with nightmares. Although the boy saw his father being detained by police, Ms. Zhao tells him that “Dad is just away at work.” This has also become the story that the son now repeats at school when classmates ask.
“In reality, he understands. He knows everything. He just wants to comfort me,” Ms. Zhao said.
Along with the letters, the torn paper portraits were a source of solace for Ms. Zhao, but now all their correspondence has been stopped. In August, Ai Weiwei, the dissident Chinese artist, published a letter that appeared to be from her husband. Since then, Mr. Gao has been cut off from getting pen and paper, in what Ms. Zhao believes is punishment for that public communication. And he can no longer send or receive letters.
Ms. Zhao says her husband’s health has suffered during detention. He has often needed a wheelchair, and he may be suffering a hardening of the blood vessels called arteriosclerosis, which could cause a stroke and other problems.
She worries about his mental health too. He has been banned from using the detention center’s library and he is not allowed time outdoors, she said.
Ms. Zhao now spends her days working on some of her husband’s projects and keeping a diary with Jia. Their lawyer is allowed to have weekly meetings with Mr. Gao at the detention center, but she is not allowed to see him. She and her son go anyway, waiting outside.
“I get to feel a little closer to him,” she said.
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The U.S.-designated terrorist Houthi movement that controls northern Yemen condemned Saudi Arabia for allegedly targeting the Sanna airport with airstrikes, sparking a possible new front with Iran’s terror-proxy.
While the Houthis agreed to a 2022 truce with the Saudi-led coalition that opposes its rule, the Houthis have frequently disrupted commercial shipping in the Red Sea since they joined Hamas following its invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The latest flare up of military strikes could lead to a resumption of war between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Houthis.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree called the attacks “blatant aggression” and said they had ended a period of de-escalation. He said Saudi Arabia would bear the consequences and that the attack would not go unanswered. The Houthis threatened to strike King Khalid Airport in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Iran’s Press TV reported on its X account that, “Iran condemns Saudi attack on Sana’a airport as breach of law, Yemen sovereignty.”
US CLAWS BACK KEY CONCESSION TO IRAN AFTER FRESH ATTACKS ON COMMERCIAL SHIPS IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ
Smoke rises following an airstrike at Sanaa International Airport, in Sanaa, Yemen, July 13, 2026, in this screengrab taken from a video. (Al Masirah Handout via Reuters)
The official slogan of the Houthi movement (Ansar Allah) is: “God is great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.”
Earlier on Monday, the government’s defense ministry said the runway at Sanaa International Airport had been targeted to prevent an Iranian plane from landing. An armed forces spokesman later said the aircraft had landed at Houthi-controlled Hodeidah airport.
Salman Al-Ansari, a prominent Saudi geopolitical analyst, told Fox News Digital, “The Iranian-backed Houthi militia is now in a desperate position, attempting to demonstrate its usefulness to its Iranian masters amid the ongoing U.S.-Iran war.”
Yemen’s Iran-backed armed Houthi group has warned they will move to shutter the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait through missile-drone attacks if Gulf nations join the US-Israel war on Iran. (Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images)
He said, “This is an action taken by Yemen’s legitimate government in response to the violation of its airspace and sovereignty. It was not carried out by Saudi Arabia or the coalition. Yemeni forces struck the runway at Sana’a International Airport after the terrorist Houthi militia defied international law by allowing unauthorized Iranian flights into Yemen, despite measures intended to prevent the smuggling of weapons and explosives.”
According to Al-Ansari, “The Houthis know that these flights can land normally if they follow the agreed-upon route through a Jordanian airport, for inspection purposes. The Houthis are currently at one of their weakest points, particularly after Yemen’s legitimate government consolidated effective authority over 80% of the country’s territory. This is a marked departure from the past, when the legitimate government was fragmented between two rival camps.”
ISRAELI AMBASSADOR WARNS IRAN’S GRIP ON LEBANON IS A ‘WARNING SIGN’ FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE
A Houthi rebel fighter fires in the air during a gathering aimed at mobilizing more fighters for their movement, in Sanaa, Yemen, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2019. The conflict in Yemen began with the 2014 takeover of Sanaa by the Houthis, who drove out the internationally-recognized government. Months later, in March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition launched its air campaign to prevent the rebels from overrunning the country’s south. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, Lebanon and other Sunni Gulf countries have expressed concerns about the Iranian regime’s plan to establish a so-called “Shiite crescent” that stretches from Iran to Lebanon and includes such terrorist proxies as the Houthis and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Al-Ansari noted that “By confronting the Houthis, Yemen’s legitimate government is not only defending its own sovereignty; it is helping safeguard the region and the wider world from Iran’s network of terrorist proxies.”
Nadwa Al-Dawsari, an expert on Yemen and an associate fellow at the Middle East Institute, told Fox News Digital that, “The Houthis’ warning that the strike on Sana’a airport ‘will not go unanswered’ should be taken seriously. But the significance of the incident extends well beyond the prospect of retaliation.”
She said, “The dispute was never really about civilian aviation or simply returning a Houthi delegation from Tehran. The Yemeni government had agreed to facilitate the delegation’s return aboard a Yemenia aircraft. The issue was the Iranian aircraft itself.”
Houthi terrorists walk over British and U.S. flags at a rally in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and the recent Houthi strikes on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden on Feb. 4, 2024, on the outskirts of Sana’a, Yemen. (Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images)
She added that “By proceeding with the Mahan Air flight despite Yemeni objections and ensuring that it reached Houthi-controlled Yemen anyway, Iran and the Houthis were sending a political message: Tehran intends to normalize direct and public ties with Houthi-controlled Yemen and is willing to challenge the restrictions that have governed access to the country since 2015.”
The U.S. government sanctioned Mahan Air for its role in supplying weapons and technology to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.
Al-Dawsari said, “What we are increasingly seeing is a pattern in which Iran and its proxies create facts on the ground, betting that regional and international actors have little appetite for escalation and will eventually adjust to them. We have seen the same approach in the Strait of Hormuz.”
Pro-Iran protesters brandish billboards depicting the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei, flags of Yemen and Iran, weapons, and chant slogans as they take part in a rally held to condemn the US-Israel aerial attacks on Iran and killing the Iranian supreme leader and several military officials on March 1, 2026, in Sana’a, Yemen. (Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images)
She said, “The episode also highlights the Houthis’ growing importance within Iran’s regional network. While other members of the Axis of Resistance have been weakened in recent years, the Houthis have emerged as Tehran’s most capable and strategically important partners, particularly in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.”
According to Reuters, the Saudi government’s communication office did not immediately respond to the accusations.
Muhammad Al-Farah, a member of the Houthi Political Bureau, wrote on Telegram, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), that the alleged Saudi attack will lead to the Bab al-Mandab Strait joining the Strait of Hormuz with respect to disruption and possible closure. As a result, the price of a barrel of oil will rise to $200 and the attacks give the Houthis a reason to “strike back and liberate Yemen from occupation.”
President Donald Trump welcomes Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House, Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025, in Washington. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
A State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital that, “We are aware of these reports and monitoring closely. The United States and Saudi Arabia share a strategic partnership that has only grown stronger under President Trump. The United States stands firmly with Saudi Arabia against Iranian aggression, including Iranian-supported Houthi attacks, and remains committed to the Kingdom’s security and regional stability.”
The spokesperson added, “We continue to actively enforce the Trump Administration’s designation of the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and condemn Iran’s flagrant violation of Yemen’s sovereignty in support of their Houthi proxies.
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“The Administration’s National Security Strategy states that our core interests in the region include ensuring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and preventing the export of terrorism. It is critical to continue efforts to counter the Iran-backed Houthis and other terrorist groups in Yemen who threaten these U.S. interests.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
Hungarian parliament passes amendment that would remove President Sulyok, appointed under ex-Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Published On 14 Jul 2026
Hungary’s parliament has approved a constitutional amendment to remove President Tamas Sulyok from his largely ceremonial position, the latest move to dismantle the power of figures associated with former Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The measure, passed on Monday with 139 votes in favour and only six opposing, would immediately bring an end to Sulyok’s term in office and pave the way for parliament to elect a new president.
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Hungarians voted out the right-wing nationalist Orban in April, with new Prime Minister Peter Magyar’s Tisza Party winning in a landslide. The election result ended 16 years of power for Orban’s Fidesz party, which had come to dominate many aspects of the country.
Since Magyar’s victory, he has sought to erode that power, including by removing the current president. The constitutional amendment also introduces a series of judicial reforms, creates a body to investigate alleged financial abuses under the previous government, and imposes a 12-year term limit on lawmakers.
Sulyok now has five days to sign the constitutional amendment passed by parliament. Magyar has said that parliament will launch an impeachment procedure against Sulyok if he does not sign it.
The president and other members of Fidesz boycotted Monday’s parliamentary session.
Sweeping away the old order
The parliament elected Sulyok, a former chief of the Constitutional Court of Hungary, in February 2024. He was nominated to replace Katalin Novak, who resigned after pardoning a man convicted of covering up child sexual abuse.
But days after Magyar’s centre-right Tisza Party won a two-thirds parliamentary super-majority in April, the new prime minister declared Sulyok “unworthy to embody the unity of the Hungarian nation” and demanded that he leave office once the new government was formed.
In June, after the deadline to resign had passed, Magyar branded the president a “puppet” of Orban and promised to strip him and other holdovers from office by constitutional means. Weeks later, he unveiled a reform programme, dubbed “Operation Cleansing Fire”, which seeks to install a new constitution, purge state institutions and establish an anticorruption office.
While the presidency is a largely symbolic post, it is empowered to approve laws and can refer them to the Constitutional Court for review, raising fears that Sulyok might use his presidential powers to stymie Tisza’s ambitious reform agenda.
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