As many of you who read this blog daily know, we have been trying to get the word out about Gao Zhisheng who has now been imprisoned in China for 96 days simply for being a Christian. We have asked you for weeks to sign the Free Gao petition that we have set up, along with our friends at The China Aid Association at http://www.freegao.com and today I am happy to share with you that the New York Times has also written a piece about the situation with Gao and his family.
The article is titled How the Family of a Dissident Fled China , and once you read it, I believe you will be moved to continue to pray for Gao and his family.
Here's a small section that impacted me.
..."
The next year, Mr. Gao said his confession had been coerced. Interrogators threatened to punish his children and deny them an education unless he cooperated, he said in April 2007. “In the end I decided I could not haggle about my children’s future,” he said. He was tortured, Ms. Geng and human rights watchdogs say, with electric prods, bamboo sticks lancing his genitals, and cigarette burns to his eyelids...."
..."For Ms. Geng, the turning point came last September, when her daughter, Geng Gege, now 16, stopped going to school. The teenager felt ostracized by her peers; they felt that her father’s status was the reason everyone’s cellphone had been confiscated, and why the police shadowed her to and from class.
“Her classmates would bully her and say, ‘Your father is involved in organized crime,’ ” Ms. Geng recalled, her voice trembling. “She could not handle it anymore and she tried to kill herself.”..
...
"One night last month, Ms. Geng woke at 3 a.m.; the light was still on. Her daughter was staring at a computer, donated by a friend. The screensaver image was Mr. Gao.
“She said, ‘I just want to say a few things to my dad,’ ” Ms. Geng recalled, sobbing. “ ‘Go back to sleep, Mom.’ ”
When one part of the body of Christ suffers we all suffer. Keep this family in your prayers.