THE CHINESE dissident Yang Jianli, who returned to his adopted home in the United States a week ago after five years in Chinese prisons, told The Post's Nora Boustany that his experience "solidified my belief in what I do" and "made me a better person." That's a very courageous way to describe the horrific, but not untypical, ordeal that Mr. Yang suffered as a political prisoner in the country preparing to host the 2008 Olympics.

A longtime U.S. resident and green-card holder, Mr. Yang was banned from China after he supported the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989. In 2002 he used a friend's passport to reenter the country, hoping to help a labor rights movement in western China. He was soon detained. But rather than charge the pro-democracy activist with illegal entry, Chinese authorities held him incommunicado for almost a year. He was then tried on blatantly bogus charges of spying for Taiwan -- but the verdict was delayed for months, in violation of China's own laws of criminal procedure. By the time his five-year sentence was handed down he had been held for two years without trial. The penalty for illegal entry into China is one year.

Like many Chinese prisoners, Mr. Yang was tortured; unlike most, he was not afraid to speak out about it, even before his release. He told a special investigator for the United Nations in 2005 that he was subjected to beatings and electric shocks. He was handcuffed unceasingly for weeks at a time. He told Ms. Boustany that for a year and a half, he was forced to sit on a bench for four hours a day without moving.

Protests about Mr. Yang's treatment by U.N. committees, both houses of Congress and the Bush administration had no impact on the government of Hu Jintao. Mr. Yang's elderly father traveled to China in 2005 to appeal for his release and died there. When authorities offered a year later to expel the dissident to the United States, he refused, insisting that he be allowed to visit his father's grave.

Even after his release in April he was denied permission to return to his wife and children in Boston. He was allowed to leave only after an appeal by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., who is negotiating with Beijing on trade issues.

Mr. Yang, who started a foundation in Boston to promote democracy in China, said that his suffering "put me in a situation where I could think of my family, my work, the future of China, and to reshape my ideas." He said that he wouldn't rule out future dissident activity. Such persistent bravery is inspiring; it also helps explain why the human rights movement in China can't be extinguished.

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Source: "Washington Post".