The wife of imprisoned human rights activist Gao Zhisheng has revealed that she could not sum up the courage to read his latest book in which he details his time in prison.
Speaking to Radio Free Asia's Mandarin Service, Geng He describes how she was "confronted with the image of her husband's bloodied body" every time she tried to read the book titled "Stand Up China 2017," launched by his daughter Grace Geng.
"I didn't have the courage to read his book in detail," Geng He said, according to a translation by RFA. "He describes the whole process of being tortured in great detail, and then he goes on to describe a whole lot more."
"I can only read a couple of sentences, then I have to shut the book again...to this day, I haven't been able to read it from cover to cover, line by line," she explained.
Gao Zhisheng was first illegally detained in 2006 when he was initially sentenced to three years in prison and five years probation for "subversion." He caught the attention of authorities for defending cases of religious persecution against house church leaders and Falun Gong practitioners.
During this time, he endured torture including being hit with electrified batons and having a toothpick inserted into his genitals, whilst the government shut down his law practice in Beijing.
He now remains under heavily guarded house arrest in a remote village in China's northwestern province Shaanxi, where he is rarely able to see or communicate with his family, who now live in the United States after escaping China in 2009.
In "Stand Up China 2017," the three time Nobel Peace Prize nominee also predicts the collapse of the Communist regime in 2017, after which he believes a transitional democratic constitutional government will run the country.