I was tortured on mainland, says HK consulate worker - RTHK
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I was tortured on mainland, says HK consulate worker

2019-11-20 HKT 15:17
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  • Simon Cheng gave an interview to the BBC about his ordeal, saying he was beaten, deprived of sleep and forced to sing the national anthem by police in Shenzhen.
    Simon Cheng gave an interview to the BBC about his ordeal, saying he was beaten, deprived of sleep and forced to sing the national anthem by police in Shenzhen.
Candice Wong reports
A former worker at Britain's consulate in Hong Kong who disappeared for 15 days during a business trip to Shenzhen in August says authorities over the border tortured him and accused him of stoking the anti-government protests in the SAR.

Simon Cheng, 29, says he was stopped in the mainland section of the West Kowloon high-speed rail station on August 8 while returning to the SAR and taken back to Shenzhen. He said he was blindfolded and beaten, and believes he witnessed other Hong Kong people suffering the same fate.

"I was hung, handcuffed and shackled, on a steep X-Cross doing a spread-eagle pose for hours after hours. I was forced to keep my hands up, so blood could not pump around my arms. It felt extremely painful. Sometimes, they ordered me to do 'stress tests', which included extreme strength exercises such as squatting and 'chair poses' for countless hours. They beat me every time I failed to do so, using something like sharpened batons."

"They also poked my vulnerable and shivering body parts, such as knee joints. I was blindfolded and hooded during the whole torture and interrogations. I sweated a lot, and felt exhausted, dizzy and suffocated," Cheng said in a statement on Facebook.

"Sometimes, they instructed me to stand still, handcuffed, shackled, blindfolded, and hooded, for hour after hour. I was not allowed to move and fall asleep, and if I did, I would be punished by being forced to sing the Chinese national anthem," Cheng said, adding that some of his interrogators spoke in Cantonese, with a Hong Kong accent.

"While being subjected to this torture, I was not allowed to say even one word. They said they had a rule that I should seek their permission to speak by saying 'report, my master'. If I didn’t follow this rule, then they slapped my mouth and face with unknown weapons that felt like sharpened batons."

Cheng said he suffered injuries to his ankles, thighs, wrists and knees and couldn't walk for days.

He said he also found that other young Hong Kong people were being held in detention alongside him, and said he believed they too were being tortured.

"They were all handcuffed and in orange prisoner vests. When I walked through the corridor, I heard one voice shout out from one of the questioning rooms 'Raise your hands higher! Didn’t you raise your hands and wave the flags in the protest?' I guessed they were torturing Hong Kong protesters."

He added that a police officer referred to one young girl being held as "one of the scum who was caught because she joined the anti-government protests in Hong Kong".

Cheng said the mainland police accused him of being a spy for Britain, as well as helping to instigate the anti-government protests that have now rocked Hong Kong for more than five months.

He said while he supports the pro-democracy movement in a personal capacity, his work for the consulate was limited to collecting information on the status of protests in order to evaluate Britain's travel alerts for its citizens. This work involved joining Telegram groups and the LIKHG forum and approaching groups of protesters for information, he said.

Cheng said that during his trip to Shenzhen, he had met the parents of a mainland protester to collect money from them for their son, to pay for judicial proceedings he was undergoing. Cheng said he had also had a massage for relaxation.

Despite the days of questioning, Cheng said he was eventually told that he had only been detained for "soliciting a prostitute" and that the authorities on the mainland did not have jurisdiction over his actions in Hong Kong. He said he was released after being made to confess to this offence on video.

In his lengthy Facebook statement, Cheng said he was granted several months of paid leave by the UK consulate following his release, and fearing he was at times being tailed by mainland security agents in Hong Kong, he fled abroad "for security reasons".

He said he began negotiations with the British government over a severance package and was asked to resign in November, bringing two years of employment with the consulate to an end.

Cheng said he is now seeking asylum "by getting right of abode" and landing work and study opportunities, but he feels vulnerable without any concrete support and protection.

"I have not fully recovered from the trauma of what happened to me," he said.
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Last updated: 2019-11-20 HKT 16:31