Australian citizen Matthew Radalj spent five years at the Beijing No 2 prison, a facility used for international inmates, and now he has shared his experience of living there with the BBC.
Radalj revealed that he underwent severe physical punishment, forced labour, food deprivation and psychological torture in the Chinese prison.
Notably, Matthew Radalj was forced to confess to robbery charges by Chinese authorities for stealing his own phone and cash, and to violently resisting arrest. He was eventually forced to spend 5 years in a Chinese prison for stealing his own phone.
Following his arrest on January 2, 2020, Radalj revealed that he was beaten for two days straight in the first police station where he was taken. He shared with the BBC that he hadn’t slept or eaten or had water for 48 hours and then he was forced to sign a big stack of documents, most probably his ‘confession’ to the ‘robbery’.
Sharing his prison experience, Radalj said, “We were banned from showering or cleaning ourselves, sometimes for months at a time. Even the toilet could be used only at specific allotted times, and they were filthy – waste from the toilets above would constantly drip down on to us.”
The inmates were also forced to march into the prison factory to the tune of Chinese Communist Party propaganda “red” songs. The traumatised Australian said that the Chinese propaganda songs are now burned into his brain.
