The Human Rights Foundation has submitted a complaint to a United Nations body that reviews detention cases on behalf of Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen, seeking a finding that his prolonged detention is arbitrary under international law. Gao, 69, was arrested in China in 2024 on “suspicion of slandering China’s heroes and martyrs,” a charge tied to his longstanding sculptural practice repurposing art historical icons to challenge official narratives and mythmaking. That year, more than 100 artworks were seized during a police raid on his studio in Sanhe City, China, including ones such as Miss Mao, Mao’s Guilt and The Execution of Christ , which critique the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarianism and censorship. As the Human Rights Foundation noted in its April petition to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the three works were all created at least nine years before China’s 2021 law prohibiting “slandering” its “heroes” and “martyrs” was enacted.…