李翘楚以煽动颠覆国家政权罪被逮捕

As someone who had stayed in a detention centre for several months, I can confirm that until today they still use starvation as a method of punishment for those who being reckoned as ‘less obedient ones’. And they call this small amount of food and water (yes, water will too be restricted to a highly insufficient volume) as ‘the government amount’. One mantou per meal is rather ‘merciful’ compared to the detention centre I stayed though (we only got half if you were on the ‘government amount’). And yet ridiculously, if you dare starve yourself for protest, they’d then immediately start tube-feeding you with—I must say that this might sound way too shocking to believe, and yet it was true—SHIT porridge.

@mlsayu_rkesee <#131519> It is shocking yet I can totally believe it.

我将您的评论翻译下便于其他网友理解：

作为一个曾在看守所待过几个月的人，我可以证实，直到今天，他们仍然用饥饿来惩罚那些被认为是“不那么听话的人”。他们把这种少量的食物和水（是的，水也会被限制在极度不足的量）称为“政府额度”。与我住的拘留所相比，每餐一个馒头是相当“仁慈”的（如果你只被给与“政府额度”，那只有半个馒头）。然而可笑的是，如果你敢饿着肚子抗议，他们就会立即开始用管子喂你“屎粥”——这听起来可能令人震惊，难以置信，然而这是真的。

而这只是冰山一角。如果你敢在牢房里抗议，他们有很多方法。最常见的是，你会被套上连体枷锁，整个身体被限制到蜷缩在一起，只能勉强移动，并被固定在木板上的镣铐上，持续数天（通常是先“钉板”一周，之后从板上的环卸下，再戴一周的连体枷锁）。你连上厕所都很难，只能在其他犯人的帮助下在木板上排泄。如果你还想喊口号，他们就会给你注射一个能造成严重肌无力的东西，以保证你不能再喊出声来（通常注射完那个东西后，人连舌头都控制不了，无法说出任何句子）。

And that’s only the tip of an iceberg when it comes to the copious methods they’d apply to if you dare protest in the cell. Most commonly, you’d be put in full harness, restricted to a posture that your entire body is huddled and can merely move, and fixed to a shackle on the board, FOR SEVERAL DAYS (usually a week for fixation and another week in full harness but be removed from the fixed shackle). You cannot even go to the toilet, so you have to pee and shit on the board with the help of other inmates. If you still try shouting slogans, they’ll jab you with something that can cause severe muscle weakness for days to ensure that you cannot cry out again (usually after jabbing with that thing, one cannot even control their tongue to form any sentence).

莫须有的现代版本。

@爱狗却养猫 <#131522> Thanks for the translation, but the ‘detention centre’ shall be translated into ‘看守所’ instead of ‘拘留所’.

@爱狗却养猫 <#131522> And you can perfectly reply in Chinese, I am a mainland Chinese after all, yet I just dare not write in Chinese for an ‘obvious reason’ ; )

@mlsayu_rkesee <#131529> 感谢指出。已经增加新的内容的翻译。我读得非常难过……谢谢您的信息。对您表示敬意。

我个人以前听人说过一种方法，就是把人放在一个很小的、类似笼子的空间里，坐不下去，站不起来，只能用一种很不舒服的姿势蹲着。时间久了会造成脊椎扭曲。

请万万珍重自身！“其身之可爱，而盗贼之不足以死也。”

@爱狗却养猫 <#131522> I must apologise for my dialect… that word ‘jab’ shall be translated into ‘注射’. Thank you :) And you might rephrase some of your translation as follow:

通常是先“钉板”一周，之后从板上的环卸下，再戴一周的连体枷锁

@爱狗却养猫 <#131535> That (what you heard about the cages) was used back in the police station, not in the detention centre :)

@mlsayu_rkesee <#131541> 唉，您笑得我心酸:(

@爱狗却养猫 <#131543> It may (or may not) surprise you that I had already prepared for such things long before my imprisonment. Only that the pandemic has restricted (or more precisely, prohibited) items to be sent through the detention centre, which led to all my pre-planned in-cell book reading programme fell through. (I had already made a booklist for my family to send before all that happens—yes, we talked about this possibility all the long.)

@爱狗却养猫 <#131543> But my weight loss programme went through very well though, with nearly 25 kg of weight disappeared in just a couple of months :)

@mlsayu_rkesee <#131545> <#131546> Respect.

减25公斤……:( 那也太瘦了……希望好好保养身体。

我不知你的书单上有什么（不用说，尤其是如果可能泄露身份的话）。我以前和朋友也讨论过“如果进去要寄什么书”的问题。我和朋友说，我要把高数重新刷一遍。

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@mlsayu_rkesee <#131548> Interesting! 我感觉，读百科全书和学外语都是不错的主意……

@爱狗却养猫 <#131549> Indeed. And that reminds me of another story to share. Just wait a minute.

@爱狗却养猫 <#131549> Here is some other trivia that might read interesting (about ‘in-cell reading’):

Although I cannot get my preferred book sent into my cell (due to the ‘pandemic’, according to them), I can still read some books that already stored inside the detention centre. Dictionaries, however, was unfortunately banned the exact day I was put in for that some former guy in the cell to be found of had been keeping a secret diary on several dictionaries he kept. So the dictionaries got banned, and I only managed to get a GRE word list book, dull but, as they say, something is better than nothing :)

And yet this ‘privilege’ of reading was not always guaranteed. There was a period of time, about 2 months or so, ‘all papers with characters on them’ (including all the books apparently) were confiscated due to some guy who managed to send messages on a note to his family via a compromised guard. This incident had led to a long period of ‘strict management’ (‘yanguan’) fell upon all the inmates. Months later, we were re-allowed to read, and I was very fortunate to be allowed to retain a copy of Dream of the Red Chamber with me for my last months there.

Now let me recollect something that I cannot end the sentence with a smiley face:

What really upset me is the deprivation of your right to meet with your counsel. They’ll try every effort to block these meetings. Firstly they told you that you’re ‘in quarantine’ and therefore no meetings allowed. (As to the right of corresponding via letters? Only a dream!) And for me, this ridiculously long period of ‘quarantine’ lasted for almost two months. And for that period of time, yes, you cannot buy things (I do not care very much about that, though). Foods: one mantou in the morning and one in the afternoon (around 4 o’clock) with exact three pieces of marinated horseradish or cucumber slices (often turned sour though); at noon, there will be one bowl of rice with salty residual ‘broth’. (After we were transferred to the detention centre, however, the ‘soup’ turned to be very light to induce you to buy more savoured foods.) Clothes, yes, were replaced with theirs immediately after you were sent to the detention centre (or in my case, the pre-detention ‘quarantine’ centre), and you can only wear the very one suit of clothes all through your first months since you cannot buy anything yet and they just give you one suit. (The number of months that you cannot buy things varied from 1.5 to 3. And it totally depends on your luck. One longest I know was stranded in the pre-detention ‘quarantine’ centre for 66 days before he was transferred to the detention centre—and yet after that, we were still needed to do another two rounds of ‘quarantine’ in the detention centre.) But I don’t care about that either, along with all those restrictions, like you have to sit in a lotus position all day long, or you cannot wash yourself even in the hottest days for months (if you were in the pre-detention ‘quarantine’ centre), or you have to wash yourself with clothes put on and using the cold water pumped out from deep wells in the coldest days (I was detained in north-east China). I won’t use the phrase ‘take a bath’ because that’s really not the thing you’d name it. You can only crouch to the ground in the small toilet and use a tiny plastic tub to get cold water from the tap and get yourself washed. I couldn’t care much because being not allowed to meet with my counsel was my greatest torment.

Secondly (well, I seemed to have gone too far from the first point I made, now let’s get back to the not-allowed meetings with your counsels), you’ll be told that the detention centre was not fully prepared to let you meet with your counsels due to ‘contagion concerns’, even though the so-called ‘meeting’ was arranged by a remote voice call (you hold one end of the phone in the meeting room and your counsel holds another far away in another building in the detention centre—you cannot see your counsel at all).

And finally, when they re-opened these meetings (after many outrageous lawyers protested outside), your counsels will have to make reservations first and wait for the notification. Sometimes they will notify your counsel the night before your meeting day, and your counsel is required to bring a PCR test report along with a document proving of ‘not having travelled out of the city for last 15 days’ with them. If your counsel cannot meet the requirements for the meeting, the meeting will be cancelled. And sometimes, when your counsel has calculated the date and prepared the required documents all along just in case they suddenly called for a meeting, there is a chance that your counsel is notified that the booked meeting was still cancelled due to too many bookings and they are very welcome to re-book for another time.

I met my counsel for the first time under the circumstances aforesaid after being detained for three whole months. And throughout the entire prosecution period, I was only be allowed to ‘meet’ with my counsel three times for about 50 minutes, 25 minutes, and 15 minutes respectively, with all my clothes be taken off and searched (as well as my anus) every time I went out and came back in the cell. You are not supposed to bring any materials with you while meeting with your counsel, even though that is a right of yours written on every wall of the cells. (Article 5. Materials of appeals, complaints, accusations, denunciations, and hiring of defending counsels are forwarded to the relevant authorities by the detention centre in a timely manner, without being withheld, delayed or destroyed. / Article 6. The defendant has the rights to correspond and meet with relatives, counsels or other defenders according to law.) It was so ridiculous that I cannot even really see my counsel, so what materials can I pass through via the ‘meetings’?

The first three months were absolute misery for me. I felt like I was living in a black box, with absolutely no information from the outside passing through. And each day, every moment, you won’t know how much longer you’ll have to endure in this ‘black box’.

@mlsayu_rkesee <#131567>

I was wondering if I could share and discuss you experiences with others?

@mlsayu_rkesee <#131553> 我想把这里的几段内容（原文和翻译）新开一贴，不知你介意吗？

@inferior <#131609> @爱狗却养猫 <#131612>

inferior: Of course you can. Even though I have just shared a tiny part of my ‘experiences’ so far :)

爱狗却养猫: It occurred to me that I may do this myself (by saying ‘this’ I mean to post my ‘life experiences’ in a north-east city’s detention centre) :) So far, I have just written down a very little part of it. I may extend it in recent days and post in a new thread when I finished. Meanwhile, you’re very welcome to mention, or quote, or translate, or discuss any of the materials by now, in any form that you’d like to.

But I am now, to a certain extent, in a quandary of how detailed information shall I share since I am still in mainland China. I DO have the intention to claim asylum in a foreign country AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE, and yet I am stuck with the first step of acquiring a passport… They simply won’t take my application, again, ‘due to the pandemic’. Who can help me with that? :(

Anyway, I’ll try to write more in the coming days.

@mlsayu_rkesee <#131651> 我建议先搞清楚是不是你所在地区护照都停办（我听说有些地区确实因为疫情停办因私护照了）。如果是的话就等等，如果就是针对你，那么得想别的办法。

So far, I have just written down a very little part of it. I may extend it in recent days and post in a new thread when I finished.

嗯。请你千万保重，安全第一，不用多写细节，就现在这样也挺好的。

@爱狗却养猫 <#131679> I have visited the local bureau of Exit and Entry Administration twice since I was discharged, asking for further information :) Without checking my personal data, I was told that only the following four situations could one apply for a passport: you must go aboard for study, medical treatment, bereavement or urgent business matters. I now very much regretted this behaviour, though, since they may have remembered me ; )

@爱狗却养猫 <#131679> And they told me that the not-very-new policy for passport issuing has been implemented since early 2020 and had not been repealed ever after.

@mlsayu_rkesee <#131686> 看起来不是针对你的，那就好！至于会不会被记住，我认为隔了一两年，换身衣服换个发型，应该不太会记住。

@爱狗却养猫 <#131689>

隔了一两年

That’s way too long :) I really, really want to leave at once.

@mlsayu_rkesee <#131690> 我有一种方法说不定可以帮到你，但是鉴于后续安全性考虑，我可能没办法公开说明 我会给你发私信。

@mlsayu_rkesee <#131690> 欧美都开始大规模打疫苗了，我认为开放办理护照的时间应该也不会太远。如果要马上办下来，我估计只能托关系了……：（ 或者可以试试能不能申请那种招生时间比较灵活的语言学校，搞留学护照？

Sorry I am not of much help...

@爱狗却养猫 <#131689>

And the reason why I am so eager to leave is that I have something I wanted to do that would only lead to my second imprisonment if I dared to do it here in mainland China. I do not fear being imprisoned, but it’s still very time consuming, and you cannot really achieve what you wanted if you frequently go in and out of prison.

And everyone in mainland China that ever has been detained would go through a procedure of capturing all your biometadata like your DNA, your finger/hand prints, your voiceprint and iris print, etc. That means you will have literally no privacy and under total surveillance for every second if you remained in mainland China. They don’t even shy away from mentioning it and will tell you very straight that you will be a ‘key target for surveillance’ for the first five years after your release.

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