Sharing a dirty cell with a dozen others, constant sleep deprivation, cells with lights on 24 hours a day; poor hygiene and forced labor.
These are just some of the experiences that prisoners in Chinese prisons are exposed to, according to Australian citizen Matthew Radalj, who spent five years in Beijing's No. 2 Prison - a facility used for international prisoners, writes the BBC.
Radalj, who now lives outside of China, decided to speak publicly about his experience and described being subjected to and witnessing severe physical punishment, forced labor, food deprivation, and psychological torture.
The BBC was able to confirm Radalj's statement with several former prisoners who were behind bars at the same time as him.
Many requested anonymity, fearing reprisals against loved ones still living in the country. Others said they simply wanted to try to forget the experience and move on.
The Chinese government did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.
Brutal beginning
"I was in a really bad state when I arrived. They beat me for two days in a row at the first police station I was in. I didn't sleep, eat or drink water for 48 hours, and then they forced me to sign a big bundle of documents," Radalj said of his induction into the prison system in China, which began with his arrest on January 2, 2020.
A former Beijing resident claims he was unfairly convicted after a fight with salespeople at an electronics store over a dispute over the agreed price for repairing a mobile phone screen.
He claims he eventually signed a false confession to the robbery, after being told it would be pointless to try to prove his innocence in a system with a nearly 100 percent conviction rate and in the hope that it would shorten his prison sentence.
Court documents show that this was at least somewhat successful, as he was given a four-year sentence.
Once he was in prison, he said he first had to spend several months in special detention where he was subjected to a more brutal "transition phase."
During that time, prisoners had to follow extremely strict rules in what he described as horrific conditions.
"We were forbidden to shower or clean ourselves, sometimes for months. Even the toilets could only be used at certain times, and they were dirty – waste from the toilet above us constantly dripped onto us."
He was eventually transferred to a "normal" prison, where prisoners had to sleep together in crowded cells where the lights were never turned off.
They also ate in the same room, he said.
According to Radalj, African and Pakistani prisoners made up the largest groups at the facility, but there were also men from Afghanistan, Britain, the United States, Latin America, North Korea and Taiwan. Most of them had been convicted of drug trafficking.
"Good behavior" scoring system
Radalj said that prisoners were regularly exposed to forms of what he described as psychological torture.
One of them was the "good behavior points system," which was a way – at least in theory – to shorten the sentence.
Prisoners could earn a maximum of 100 points per month for activities such as studying Communist Party literature, working in the prison factory, or reporting other prisoners. Once they had accumulated 4.200 points, they could theoretically use them to reduce their sentences.
If you do the math, that would mean that a prisoner would have to earn the maximum number of points every month for three and a half years before this system would start working.
Radalj said that in reality, the system was used as a means of psychological torture and manipulation.
He claims that guards would deliberately wait until a prisoner was almost at their destination and then punish them for any of a huge list of possible infractions, thus cancelling out their points at a crucial moment, according to the BBC.
These infractions included – but were not limited to – hoarding or sharing food with other prisoners, walking in the hallway incorrectly (outside the line drawn on the floor), hanging socks on the bed incorrectly, and even standing too close to the window.
Other prisoners who spoke to the BBC about this scoring system described it as a mental game designed to break the prisoners' spirits.
Former British prisoner Peter Humphrey, who spent two years in detention in Shanghai, said his facility had a similar points-and-sentence reduction system that was manipulated to control prisoners and prevent sentences from being shortened.
"There were cameras everywhere, even three in a cell," he said. "If you crossed the line marked on the floor and were caught by a guard or a camera, you would be punished. The same would happen if you didn't make your bed to military standards or if you didn't put your toothbrush in the exact spot in your cell."
"There was also group pressure among the prisoners, where the entire group in the cell would be punished if one prisoner did any of these things."
One former prisoner told the BBC that during his five years in prison he never saw the points actually used to reduce his sentence.
Radalj said there were several prisoners – including himself – who didn't care about the points system.
Then the authorities resorted to other methods of psychological pressure.
This included cutting back on monthly phone calls to family or reducing other "benefits."
Food as a means of control
The most common daily punishment involved reducing the amount of food.
Several former prisoners told the BBC that meals at Beijing Prison No. 2 consisted mainly of cabbage in dirty water, sometimes with bits of carrot and, if they were lucky, thin strips of meat.
They were also given mantou - a common northern Chinese bread. Most of the prisoners were malnourished, Radalj added.
Another prisoner described how prisoners ate a lot of mantou because they were constantly hungry. He said their diet was so nutritionally poor – and they were only allowed to exercise outside for half an hour a week – that they developed thin upper bodies but had bloated bellies from eating so much mantou.
Prisoners were allowed to supplement their diet by purchasing extra meals if their relatives paid money into so-called "accounts" – essentially prison records of funds intended for the purchase of things like soap or toothpaste.
They could also buy instant noodles or soy powder. But even this "privilege" could be denied them.
Radalj said he was forbidden from buying anything for 14 months because he refused to work in the prison factory, where prisoners made basic products for companies or compiled propaganda leaflets for the Communist Party, according to the BBC.
Even worse, they were forced to work on a "farm", where they managed to grow many vegetables, but they were not allowed to eat them.
Radalj said the farm was shown to the visiting justice minister as an example of impressive prison life.
But, he said, it was all fake.
"We would grow tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage and okra, and then - at the end of the season - we would throw it all in a big hole and bury it," he added.
"And if you were caught with a hot pepper or a cucumber, you would immediately be sent to solitary confinement for eight months."
Another prisoner said that they would occasionally be given protein, such as chicken thighs, to make their diet look better when officials visited the prison.
Humphrey said there were similar food restrictions in his prison in Shanghai, adding that this led to power struggles among prisoners: "The kitchen was run by prison labor. Those who worked there stole the best food and were able to distribute it."
Radalj described the conflict between African and Taiwanese groups in Beijing's No. 2 Prison over this issue.
Nigerian prisoners worked in the kitchen and "had small benefits, like a bag of apples a month or some yogurt or a couple of bananas," he said.
Then the Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese managed to convince the guards to hand over the kitchen to them, thus gaining control of precious extra supplies.
This led to a big fight, and Radalj said he found himself in the middle of it. He was sent to solitary confinement for 194 days after hitting another inmate.
In solitary confinement, they finally turned off his lights – only for him to realize that now he would have the opposite sensory problem because there would be almost no light at all.
His small ration of food was also cut in half. There was no reading material or people to talk to, while he was confined to a bare 1,2 by 1,8 meter (4 feet by 6 feet) room for half a year.
"You start going crazy, whether you like it or not, and that's what solitary confinement is supposed to achieve... So you have to decide very quickly whether your room is really, really small or really, really big."
"After four months you just start talking to yourself all the time. The guards would come and ask 'Hey, are you okay?' And you'd say 'Why?' And they'd say, 'Because you're laughing.'"
Then, Radalj said, he would respond in his mind: "It's none of your business."
Another feature of Chinese prison life, according to Radalj, were the fake "propaganda" moments that officials organized for Chinese media or during visits, to present a false picture of prison conditions.
He said that at one point a "computer room" was set up.
"They brought us all in and said we would get our email addresses and be able to send emails. Then they filmed three Nigerians using those computers."
The three prisoners, he said, seemed confused because their computers were not connected to the internet – but the guards told them they were just "acting".
"Everything was filmed to present a false image of prisoners with access to computers," Radalj said.
But, he claims, shortly after the recordings were made, the computers were wrapped in plastic wrap and never used again.
Memoirs
Throughout much of his ordeal, Radalj kept a secret diary by separating the layers of protective Covid masks and writing small sentences inside, with the help of several North Korean prisoners, who have since also been released.
"I would write, and Koreans would tell me: 'Less... even less!'"
Radalj said that many prisoners had no way to inform their families that they were in prison.
Some were unable to make any phone calls because no one paid them. For others, embassies did not register their families' phone numbers with the prison phone system. Only calls to officially approved numbers worked.
So when word got out that the Australian was planning to try to smuggle out his notes, many prisoners gave him information so he could contact their families.
"I had 60 or 70 people hoping I would be able to contact their loved ones after I got out and tell them what was going on."
He wrapped the pieces of protective masks as tightly as he could with tape he stole from the prison factory and tried to swallow the egg-sized bundle without the guards seeing him.
But he couldn't keep it in his stomach.
The guards saw what was happening on the cameras and began to question him: "Why are you vomiting? Why are you choking? What's wrong?"
So he gave up and hid the bundle, writes the BBC.
When he was due to be released on October 5, 2024, he was given his old clothes that had been torn during his first arrest.
There was a tear in the lining of his jacket and he quickly stuffed the notes inside before the guard could see him.
Radalj says he thinks someone tipped off the prison guards about his plan because they searched his room and questioned him before he was released.
"Did you forget something?" the guards asked.
"They destroyed all my things. I thought: now they'll put me back in solitary confinement. There will be new charges."
But the guard who was holding his clothes didn't know that the diary was hidden inside.
"They told me, 'Get out of here!' And it wasn't until I was on the plane, when we took off and the seatbelt light went off, that I reached into the lining of my jacket to check."
The notes were there.
Life after prison
Just before he boarded the plane in Beijing, a police officer who escorted him to the gate used Radal's boarding pass to buy cigarettes from a convenience store for his friends.
"He told me, 'Don't go back to China. You're banned from entering for 10 years.' And I told him, 'Okay. Don't smoke. It's bad for your health.'"
The policeman laughed.
He arrived back in Australia and hugged his father at Perth airport. Tears flowed.
He then married his longtime girlfriend and now they spend their days making candles and other products.
Radalj says he still feels anger about everything he went through and that he has a long road ahead of him to true recovery.
But he is slowly going through the contact list of his former prison mates – "I've spent the best part of the last six months contacting their families, lobbying their embassies to maybe try to help them more while they're in prison."
Some of them, he says, haven't spoken to their loved ones in almost a decade. And helping them has helped him return to a normal life.
"With freedom comes a huge sense of gratitude," Radalj says. "You have a deeper respect for the simplest things in life. But I also feel a great responsibility to the people I left behind in prison."
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