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.
Cities across Israel have taken measures to prepare for Byron, but Palestinian citizens there have no resources.
Israel is bracing itself for heavy downpours and flash floods that Storm Byron is forecast to produce, especially in the coastal areas.
The Israel Meteorological Service said on Thursday that rain is likely to cover cities from northern Israel to the Negev in the south, with floods possible in low-lying cities. Up to 150mm (5.9 inches) of rain is estimated in some coastal areas, with wind gusts of up to 90km/h (56mph).
The Israeli army chief, Eyal Zamir, issued safety guidelines for the military, cancelling all leave until 6am on Friday, prohibiting all outdoor training activities and limiting soldiers to “operational” and “essential” activities.
Israel has been on high alert. Cities across the country have taken measures to prepare for the storm, reinforcing emergency teams and opening shelters in case they are needed.
Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Eli Cohen assessed the situation with various government bodies to ensure an uninterrupted electricity supply during the storm.
In contrast, unrecognised Bedouin communities in southern Israel are bracing for disaster, hoping for a miracle. Close to 30,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel live in those communities without any basic services, including electricity, water, or infrastructure. Many of the homes and buildings in these communities are under demolition orders. They will face the brunt of the storm without recourse for help from Israeli authorities.
‘Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people’
Recognised non-Jewish towns in the Negev have a tense relationship with the state. On Wednesday, Omar al-Asam, head of the Tal al-Sabe Council, announced a strike to protest against the police blocking off the town’s only entrance and assaulting one of the residents.
“The police’s racist and aggressive conduct is unacceptable, and it goes to show the police’s racist attitude towards Arab citizens across the country, especially in the Negev,” al-Asam told local media.
This tension is a mainstay in Israel’s relationship with its non-Jewish citizens. In 2019, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Israel is not a state of all its citizens.”
“According to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it,” Netanyahu wrote on Instagram in response to criticism from Israeli actor Rotem Sela.
This attitude is part of Israel’s institutional discrimination against non-Jewish citizens, amounting to apartheid according to experts and human rights organisations. In the past two years, right-wing politicians have advocated for the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel or conditioning nationality on loyalty. Some have repeatedly attempted to outlaw non-Jewish parties and expel members of Knesset, the Israeli parliament, most recently in June 2025.
Byron poses ‘lot of challenges’
Meanwhile, the occupied West Bank also faces serious challenges from the storm.
Youssef Abu Saadah, the head of the meteorological service in Palestine, told Al Jazeera, “The expected rain from Storm Byron is more than a third of the average yearly rainfall. This poses a lot of challenges.”
He clarified that flood warnings in the Negev are partly because of the downstream from the Hebron hills in the West Bank.
Since the start of the occupation in 1967, Israel has barred Palestinians in the West Bank from collecting rainwater. This means that much of the downpours in the Hebron area will find their way to the Negev.
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As the U.S. ramps up attacks on alleged drug-trafficking boats, blowing up vessels and killing their crews, American allies across the Atlantic are waging their own at-sea fights with suspected narcotics smugglers.
“Europe is literally being flooded with cocaine,” Artur Vaz, Portugal’s narcotics police chief, told Fox News.
“Criminal organizations… acquire the drugs in Latin America, and then the price at which they place it in the markets… there’s a big profit margin here,” said Vaz, director of the National Unit for Combating Drug Trafficking at Portugal’s Judiciary Police.
The drugs come over in cargo ships, high-speed boats and, increasingly, low-budget, semi-submersible vessels known colloquially as “narco-subs.” These boats sail largely undetected with only the top of the craft visible — often painted, researchers say, in steely blues and grays to blend in with the stormy Atlantic waves and evade surveillance efforts.
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Spanish police chase a high-speed boat carrying suspected drug smugglers in footage released by the Guardia Civil. (Guardia Civil via Storyful)
Portuguese authorities scored a notable capture this fall, intercepting a narco-sub in the mid-Atlantic with 1.7 metric tons of cocaine on board. But European authorities acknowledge that many others are making it past their defenses.
“The interdiction rates for these subs is between 10%, roughly, and maybe as low as 5%,” said Sam Woolston, a Honduras-based investigative journalist specializing in organized crime.
“Even if one or two get nabbed by the authorities, it’s not enough to dissuade them.”
European authorities mostly choose to intercept narco boats, stopping far short of the Trump administration’s policy of destroying them. Instead, the often low-rung crews are detained for interrogation, in the hope of shedding light on shady drug kingpins, gang operations and distribution networks.
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Officials tell Fox News, though, that they would like to do more.
“We must be more muscular — that is, with greater means and a greater capacity for intervention,” said Vaz. “But, of course, within the rule of law.”
As for the narco-subs, those vessels aren’t new, but they never used to cross oceans.
“It’s mind-boggling, the level of sophistication,” Derek Maltz, a former acting chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told Fox News.
Portuguese police inspect the scene after capturing a narco-sub in March 2025, authorities said. (Policia Judiciaria.)
“But it’s all about the money, and it’s all about the risk, and right now I don’t think these networks perceive Europe as a huge risk for them.”
Journalist Woolston says the transatlantic voyage is typically crewed by “desperate people,” given its perilous nature.
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“You’ll be locked up in a very small compartment for days, usually inhaling things like diesel fumes. There have been cases of narco submarines found with a crew of dead bodies.
“The kingpins would not get on these boats.”
Published on
Trying to understand tech billionaire Elon Musk is like trying to assemble IKEA furniture in the dark.
Except we have no instructions, and the pieces keep changing shape.
Some Europeans dismiss him as a “barbaric cowboy”. We pride ourselves on being the educated adults in the room.
Well, if we are so clever, let us prove it and use Carl Jung to talk about Elon. This Swiss psychologist defined archetypes — the universal roles.
But there is a catch. For every positive one, there is a shadowy downside.
First, there is the Creator. As one, Musk is the visionary building rockets to take him to Mars one day. But his shadow is the Anarchist. He treats SpaceX explosions as “data” and he is willing to burn billions — and occasionally break laws — to see if his toys work.
Second, the Ruler. If money is the measure of success, he is the most profitable CEO in the world who just secured $1 trillion deal at Tesla to keep him.
But his shadow is the Tyrant. When he took over Twitter — now X — he did not just restructure the social media network, he decapitated it. He fired 80% of the staff in weeks, demanding “hardcore” loyalty just to prove he holds the crown.
And third, the Jester. The internet troll posts memes that make people laugh. But here, his shadow is the Nihilist, the cruel trickster who retweets posts comparing the European Union to the “Fourth Reich.”
He burns institutions not for a plan, but for the “lols” — because he believes nothing matters anyway.
Musk is a spectacle we cannot look away from. So, Mr Musk, which Elon are you today?
Watch the Euronews video in the player above for the full story.
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Watch the video: Elon Musk, creator, jester, ruler or nihilist?
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