US geologist jailed in China on spying charges thanks captors for making him ‘stronger’
Chinese-born Xue Feng was released last week after his prison term for selling a database about China's oil industry
A US geologist who spent more than seven years in a prison in China thanked his jailers for making him and his family stronger in a statement quoting US civil rights champion Martin Luther King and Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Xue Feng, who was convicted on state secrets charges, was immediately deported after leaving jail in Beijing last week, the US-based Dui Hua Foundation said in a statement.
In an emotional letter reflecting on his ordeal and posted online by his PhD advisor David Rowley, Xue wrote: “I am starting a new chapter of my life, during which I shall make myself worthy of what I have gone through.
“I should also thank those people who plunged my family and me into this agony.
“The anguish made us stronger as a family, gave us an opportunity to prove and further build our character and offered us a chance to shed old baggage and start a new chapter of our lives.”
Xue returned to the US city of Houston and was reunited with his family on Friday, according to Dui Hua, which advocates for clemency and better treatment for prisoners in China.
As he stepped from the airplane on to US soil, he wrote, “I recited Fyodor Dostoevsky with tears welling up in my eyes ‘There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings’.”