Pro-democracy advocate and Harvard scholar Yang Jianli spent five years locked away in a Chinese jail. He now lives in the US, but he hopes to one day return to China permanently.

Dr Yang was detained in April 2002, after arriving in China on a friend's passport, to research labour unrest in the country's northeast. He was later convicted and jailed of espionage and entering the country illegally.

He reunited was with his wife and two children, who live in Boston, just over a year ago.

Lobbying on Capitol Hill

The Boston Globe describes how for years his wife, Christina Fu, campaigned for his release:

" … She organized her friends for letter-writing campaigns to political heavy hitters and tapped their friends' friends to write their states' representatives. She appealed to Bush administration officials, including Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, and sent out more than 2,000 e-mails and letters, urging intervention. For one week straight, she and Genser knocked on more than 100 doors on Capitol Hill …

"… Before long, she had turned his imprisonment into one of the most publicized cases of dissident abuse. She was on a first-name basis with many Washington lawmakers and had prayed with Desmond Tutu for Yang's freedom …"

Psychological abuse

The newspaper describes how Dr Yang – who has set up several pro-democracy groups – was tortured while in jail:

" … Yang Jianli's face bears no traces of his incarceration … You can't tell that he was beaten, or that he was handcuffed for 15 consecutive days, or forced to sit without moving for four hours every day for more than a year. Or that he endured psychological abuse - hints from his captors that his son had been taken into custody …"

While in jail, he refused to appeal against his sentence. He said it would give undue credibility to the court, laws and procedures used to convict him.

Dreaming of home

Dr Yang isn't bitter at those who persecuted him, and he's still committed to campaigning for democratic reform in China, writes the Boston Globe.

He tried unsuccessfully to re-enter the country for the first time last month.

" … Of course, he hasn't stopped thinking about going back to China. "I need to be home. I need to be there to play a more important role," he says. Fu accepts this and says she's willing to help him any way she can. Someday, they believe, all those lonely hours, all those difficult choices, will have been worth it …"