2014-08-14
Gao Zhisheng during an interview at his office in Beijing, in a file photo.
AFP
A week after authorities in China released prominent dissident Gao Zhisheng, his wife says he has been severely tortured in jail to a point where a human rights group believes he has been “utterly destroyed.”
“I am completely devastated by what the Chinese government has done to my husband,” U.S.-based Geng He said after speaking with him and hearing from her family about Gao’s “immense suffering” following his release from a prison in the remote Xinjiang region on Aug. 7.
“The only thing I feared more than him being killed was his suffering relentless and horrific torture and being kept alive,” she said, according to a statement by Freedom Now, a Washington-based group which advocates for prisoners of conscience, including Gao.
Freedom Now said the 52-year-old Gao, who is now staying with his wife’s sister in China’s western Xinjiang region, under a round-the-clock watch by Chinese security officials, “has been utterly destroyed.”