2020 update. As you may recall, UK consulate worker, Hong Konger Simon Cheng was arrested in Shenzhen in 2019 and held for 2 weeks on prostitution charges. He has since been released from custody and is currently seeking political asylum in the UK.
In the first video below, he relates his harrowing escape from Hong Kong and Taiwan after being released from detention in China. They may have released him, but they were still watching him. Even Taiwan appeared unsafe.
As a missing person report had been filed by his family in Hong Kong, he had to report to the police station in Hong Kong to close the case. When questioned by Hong Kong police, he did not reveal what happened in China. He was not even sure if the HK police would dare to record his statement about being tortured in China.
This second video describes the whole process of being stopped at Kowloon West station immigration checkpoint, brought back to Futian in Shenzhen and subsequently transferred to Luohu. In the beginning, the whole interrogation process was focused on his involvement in subversive activities in Hong Kong.
While Simon’s activities in Hong Kong were perfectly legal, the Chinese authorities had to have some other reason for detaining him. Simon admits that he had visited massage parlours on his many trips into China. The police offered him a bargain, pointing out that soliciting prostitutes is a much less serious crime.
Simon thought he would be released soon if he confessed, but instead, he was put under solitary confinement. He was then brought out of the official detention centre, hooded and transferred to some unknown location about 30-40 mins’ drive from Luohu. Over there, he was hooded, blindfolded, subjected to torture and accused of spying for the UK.
They then tried to extract information from the UK consulate from him and accused him of colluding with foreign powers against his own country. They did tie him up and deprived him of sleep, but to be fair, a lot of the “torture” only involved the military sort of “tekan” with the occasional slap and knock on some sensitive area. All this went on for a week. By then, Simon was suffering a nervous breakdown and begging for mercy.
On the second week, they provided medical care and after he had made some recovery, they asked him to sign a doctor’s report certifying that he was in good health. Simon had to do the smart thing and sign it lest they decide to hold him for further observation. There was hence no evidence of torture. They could only charge him for prostitution, but as even the blind can see, the motive behind all this is solely political.
While we foreigners are just spectators in this whole fiasco, it is important not to casually dismiss the concerns of Hong Kong protesters fighting the extradition bill. Nor should we wildly speculate that Hong Kongers have been brainwashed by the Western media or are mercenaries on the payroll of Western powers.
The majority of those on the streets know exactly what they are doing. They are acting on their beliefs and they know a hell lot more about what goes on inside Chinese courts and police stations than Singaporean tourists fascinated with the CCP’s economic and infrastructural achievements.
New Book!
