cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/29827812
An Australian man says an extortion attempt at an electronics repair store landed him in a Beijing jail, where he was forced to confess to stealing his own phone.
Australian Matthew Radalj was running a clothing business out of Beijing in January 2020 when he left his apartment one morning to collect his phone from an electronics market, where he had dropped it off days earlier for repairs.
What happened next would land him in jail for nearly the next five years, the victim, in his retelling of events, of an extortion attempt and a justice system that convicts 99 per cent of those who come before it.
Under what he says were torturous conditions, he would be forced to confess to robbery charges for stealing his own phone and cash and to violently resisting arrest.
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Each morning, the inmates would be forced to march into the factory to the tune of Chinese Communist Party propaganda “red” songs. The lyrics are burnt into his brain: Wo ai ni zhongguo.
“It means ‘I love you, China’,” says Radalj. “The Chinese system is designed to extract as much suffering from you as possible. At a certain point, you’re not even human any more.”
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Radalj says when he arrived at the electronics market on January 3, 2020, the shop owner, a man called Wei, had more than doubled the agreed price to fix his smashed yellow iPhone 11 and put a new deal on the table. It was now going to cost him 3500 yuan ($767), but Wei’s friend would buy the phone for 1000 yuan and settle his debt. Radalj rejected the deal, paid the original price, took his phone and left.
But as he was exiting the market, he was set upon by security guards carrying pepper spray and electric batons. He fought back, he says, grabbing the pepper spray and using it on one of the security officers and stunning another with a baton he seized in the brawl before being chased into the street, where he was subdued by a mob.
“I had to basically fight for my life,” he says.
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After his arrest, Radalj says he endured cruel treatment at a detention centre until he agreed to sign a “leniency document” confessing to the robbery charges. He was left in rooms for long stretches with static playing through speakers, and he was forced to strip naked and go outside in Beijing’s sub-zero winter. For 10 months, he had no access to money, meaning he couldn’t buy a toothbrush, toilet paper or underwear, nor could he call his family or friends, who were becoming increasingly worried.
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Radalj says he was held in Beijing Number 3 Detention Centre for 504 days before being transferred to Beijing Number 2 Prison, where he spent 1230 days.
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Radalj’s story is an apparent example of how a confluence of circumstance, harsh laws and policing, and geopolitical jostling can conspire in a devastating way to leave foreigners at the mercy of China’s unflinching legal system.
His situation was worsened by the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, during which the prison was sealed off. It also made consular access difficult and soured the Australia-China relationship during the Morrison government era.
“Even in the police station, they were saying, ‘You’re Australian. This is China. Australia is not our friend’,” Radalj says.
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