Gao Zhisheng, released from prison on August 7, has been left unable to speak coherently after his imprisonment on charges of subversion.
Once released, his family – now living in the USA – had telephone conversations with him. But after some phone calls in which he said very little, his wife wasn’t sure whether he was still in too much pain to talk or had forgotten how.
Isolation and torture
It has become clear that isolation and torture left Gao, once a prominent attorney who defended Christians and the Falun Gong, unable to speak coherently.
China Aid reports: ‘Gao has been utterly destroyed. He can barely talk – and only in very short sentences – most of the time he mutters and is unintelligible. It is believed that he is now suffering from a broad range of physical and mental health problems; he has not been allowed to see a doctor since his release’.
His wife Geng He and their two children escaped to the United States in 2009 and are living in northern California, while Gao is under virtual house arrest at Geng’s sister’s place in Urumqi, capital of China’s Xinjiang Province in the country’s far west. The government has forbidden him to travel to Beijing, much less to the United States to be reunited with his family.
Malnutrition
Gao’s advocacy for religious minorities led to his conviction in 2006 for ‘inciting subversion’, and in 2007 he began serving a previously suspended sentence of three years in Shaya County Prison in Xinjiang region. After he wrote an open letter to the US Congress about human rights abuses in China, authorities ‘disappeared’ him in September 2007, torturing him for more than 50 days. Gao later revealed that his captors shocked his genitals with an electric baton and pierced them with toothpicks.
He was fed a single slice of bread and a piece of cabbage once a day, and he has lost many teeth from malnutrition. It is believed he was also repeatedly physically tortured.
Needing help
‘The only thing I feared more than him being killed was his suffering relentless and horrific torture and being kept alive’, said his wife. ‘We desperately need help from our adopted country and from President Obama personally to demand [that] the Chinese government allows my husband to come to the United States for medical treatment.’
