Chinese prisons are fast turning into Nigerian communities as the number of inmates from the West African country increases on a daily basis. Many of the inmates are battling mental illness resulting from hard labour, torture and other dehumanising issues. Ex-inmates alleged that Nigerians get harsh sentences because the nation’s envoys stay aloof when other diplomats intervene in their citizens’ situations. INNOCENT DURU reports
Papirose, a Nigerian businessman, travelled to China in January 2013 with high hopes. As a businessman, his choice of China was deliberate. The Asian country is reputed as the largest manufacturer and exporter of goods globally.
With the foregoing in mind, Papirose was upbeat that in a short time he would become an importer of finished goods from China in Nigeria. But his high hope did not endure before it was dashed.
According to him, trouble began with a directive from the Chinese government that foreign traders in the country must acquire certain business papers, which he said were not easy to obtain.
Consequently, he said, he quit business and went to work in a club as a hypeman. The hyping job required him to work on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and he said it was okay because it helped him to pay rent and settle other bills.
As a hype man who was good at what he was doing, Papirose said he always had many people visiting his house.
“One day,” he said, “security operatives came to my house alleging that there was a call made from there. I asked if there was any phone with such calls from me and they said there was none, but they found that a lot of people were coming to my house.
“I told them that yes, people always came to my house and that I just celebrated my birthday.
“After everything, they saw that there was no evidence they could use against me. Unfortunately, they took me to a police station from where they took me to the detention centre.”
Papirose said at the detention centre, the Chinese authorities asked him to plead yempha, yempha; “that is to plead guilty so that they would give me lesser sentence. But I insisted on knowing what I did wrong.
“I asked whether they found any evidence on me and why I should plead guilty.”
Miffed by his audacity, the security operatives yelled at him, saying “you Africans, what are you doing in Guangzhou here? You are only here in Guangzhou selling drugs and doing fraud.
“I said do you have any evidence against me?”
Papirose forgot, however, that China is not Nigeria as he later found that the police in China are like gods. “If they talk to you, you don’t have to reply. They will tell you this is China and there is no why for anything they do.”
Papirose said looking for a way to nail him, the policemen brought out a Chinese girl they had arrested and asked the girl if she knew him.
“The Chinese girl said she didn’t. They found that the person that committed the fraud was in Ghana and not in Nigeria. I was in China and hadn’t left China for a long time, so why are you holding me?
“They said once an African defrauds a Chinese, fellow Africans have to suffer for it. I was like what is going on? That an African has to suffer for a crime committed by another African?
“They also brought a Cameroonian they had arrested and the boy also said he didn’t know me.
“They frustrated the Cameroonian and caused him depression. The boy eventually died.”
“Whenever an African died, they would tell me, you cannot say yemfa yemfa? See, your brother has already died and you cannot say yemfa yemfa.
“I was detained at the centre for almost five years. I went to court twice.
“Also at the court, I did not know that it was impossible to challenge a prosecutor.”
Papirose’s journey to prison in China was one of the numerous cases of Nigerian citizens who ended their search for greener pastures in jail. Onowu Chukwuemeka, an ex-inmate who spent 15 years in Dongguan Foreign Prison, said more than 5,000 Nigerian inmates are enduring unimaginable suffering and injustice in the Asian country.
The figure provided by Onowu is, however, lower than the data published by Patriotic Citizens Initiatives (PCI), a civil society group, which indicated that as many as 8,000 Nigerians are incarcerated in Chinese prisons.
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Following the large number of the citizens in the various prisons, Nigerian languages are said to have become very common in the prisons such that one could easily mistake the area for a Nigerian community.
One of the ex-inmates told our correspondent that some prison officials have become very familiar with names of Nigerian states and communities such that when a new convict comes, they would ask if he is from X, Y or Z state.
Brown, another Nigerian businessman travelled to China in 2015 for business purposes. But within two years of his stay in the country, he got arrested and had his dreams shattered.
Narrating what led him to prison, Brown said: “I met a friend there and he started living with me. I didn’t know that he was having prohibited items with him. When they caught him, they arrested both of us because he was living with me. I was convicted and sent to prison.”
There in prison “I filed for an appeal to no avail. As a foreigner, I stayed in prison for two years and six months without contacting my family. They restricted us from getting access to anybody that can reach our families.
“My family could not get any information about my whereabouts until I reached out to somebody in China who helped to contact them. Some people even exploited my family members, promising to find me.
“It was a very sad experience. I came back home with nothing. I lost everything.”
It was also a journey full of woes for Mike who had gone to China in 2009 with a view to expanding his business like the others previously mentioned.
“I was arrested when I visited one of my friends’ apartments,” he said as he began to narrate his journey into jail.
“After their only investigation, they said they found something in the apartment and that because I was a close friend to the owner of the apartment, I would certainly be part of the deal.
“I was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.
“Many people especially Nigerians are going down over there because of the prison conditions. The way they torture people there is something else.
“They will not beat you, but they will give you psychological torture.
“By the time they are done, the inmate would not be able to speak coherently anymore.
“You will discover that a very close person to you is not normal anymore.”
Suspects made to sign documents written in Chinese
Reliving his ordeal while undergoing trial, Papirose said: “In the court, they would give you a government lawyer, who is actually a prosecutor. They will have three lawyers that will come and visit you. The first two lawyers will visit you and tell you when you’re going to be in court.
“When you get to the court, it is another lawyer that will come. And these three lawyers will be writing different things. And when they write it in Chinese, they want you to sign.”
Papirose’s trial experience wasn’t too different from that of Mike who got his sentence details from his Chinese lawyer even before going to court.
His words: “They gave me a Chinese lawyer. First they asked if I had a lawyer. I said I didn’t have money to get one. Then they gave me a lawyer.
“When the lawyer came to meet me at the detention centre, all he did was to ask me what happened. After that, he said he would go through my file.
“Thereafter, he said that my sentence was going to be seven years at six month but that we should wait and see what would happen,”
Continuing, Mike said: “When they took me to court, the judge said the evidence was not clear. Then they went back to bring some of the security men in the apartment that I visited.
“They came and bore false witness that they found something where they arrested me. I asked them for evidence but they said if there was no evidence, they could use the witnesses’ account against me. It was on account of the witnesses that they sentenced me.
“Our people are really going through hell in the prisons over there because nobody cares about them. I can tell you that throughout my seven years in the prison, I only met our consulate once.”
Ex-inmates share hard experiences
Papirose told The Nation that all he experienced in the prison was forced labour.
He said: “What America is saying about China is the fact. The people are engaged in forced labour.
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“Some Chinese people told me that their business growth comes from their prisons. They have more than 30 million prisoners delivering free service for them. So you cannot compete with them.
“Nationals of about five African countries are working for them free of charge,” he said.
Asked about what the inmates produce in prison, he said: “There’s nothing we were not producing in prison. The completion of every production process is done in the secret room with only Chinese people present.
“Because of the situation, people were dying. These people have no mercy.
“In their prisons you have to work. They are going to give you points to meet. If you don’t do up to 2700 or 2800 points, you’re not going to make calls to your family, and there’s a limit to things you can buy. So they have to depress you for that, so that you can be working hard.
“They have major prisons, but most of foreign prisons are in Dong Wan. But foreigners don’t go to Shenzhen prison, because that is where Huawei produces everything.
“They gave me only 550 quai, which is not up to $100, after my jail term.”
He added that the Chinese don’t respect laws but only follow tradition. “There’s nothing like law. It’s a communist state,” he said.
Also reliving his experience, Brown described the processes in the prison, the humiliation, the frustration and the propaganda they faced as foreigners as harrowing.
“To start with, we were being forced to work on all the products. About 60% of products being manufactured in China are being made by the prisoners under duress.
“We were forced to work nine hours non-stop from Monday to Saturday. Sometimes they made us work on Sundays for some hours.
“Yes, there was serious torture in the prison. When they force you to work beyond your capacity and you make them to see why you wouldn’t be able to do that, they will start deducting your points, restricting you from making calls, and you will not get commutation. Commutation is reduction of sentence.”
Providing details about the targets given to inmates, Brown said: “Every month they will give you a target. If you finish your target for the month, they will give you 100 points which will qualify you to make calls for the month. Each day, you have to make about 480 points for the first grade.
“In a month, they will add it together and compile it to give you citations of 100 points. So, if you fail to meet the target, your point is deducted. That means that for that month, you would not make any call. Everything you are supposed to get for that month will be cancelled.
“If for any reasons you go against their order, they will take you into confinement with chains. Sometimes they shock inmates with electric and spray them with tear gas. Inmates don’t usually die in the process of torture, but many lose their senses subsequently.
“I know about 10 to 15 Nigerians now in a state of not knowing anything again out of frustration and torture. Sometimes the prison officials would come and tell us openly that the westerners enslaved the blacks for many years and nobody made a comment. Now is their turn to enslave us.”
On his part, Mike said: “We worked like machines every day. They will give you food but you know what prisoners’ food look like. They won’t deny you food but they will give you other punishments if you are not meeting the targets.
“If you have stayed in prison for six months and failed to meet target, they erase all the points you had scored and make you start afresh.”
Mike also spoke about how the Chinese authorities shield the hard labour going on in the prisons from diplomats.
He said: “When they built a new prison and wanted diplomats from other countries to come and visit, the Chinese took all the work inside the factory and instructed inmates not to show that they were engaged in any work.
“They did that because there were complaints that they were using prisoners for forced labour. They denied it and wanted to use the organised visit to prove that.
“When the diplomats left, they told inmates to face their work and threatened that if we didn’t face our work, they were going to face us.”
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Nigerian consulate accused of compromise
The ex-inmates accused the Nigerian envoy in China of staying aloof whenever the citizens have challenges.
Papirose said: The Nigerian consulate there is very timid. Ethiopia cares a lot for their people and that is why their jail terms are very low.
“If a Nigerian has a case, they will give him 12 years, but they will give an Ethiopian three years for the same offence because they know their consulate is always there for their people.”
Also speaking on the Nigerian consulate’s nonchalant attitude to the predicaments of the citizens, Brown said: “When I was in detention, a diplomat visited me just once. I narrated my ordeal to him, especially about my passport.
“That was on December 28, 2018. But until 2024 that I left, I got no response from him. I spent about six years without hearing from my consulate. That gives the Chinese government upper hand to maltreat Nigerians.”
Home at last
Even though he returned home empty handed after serving his jail term, Mike is excited that he didn’t die in confinement. “My own happiness was when my feet touched the ground at the Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos. I said God, this is me again in this country. I’m not going anywhere again even if I’m going to make millions, because of what I saw in China. No, no, no, no, no, no.
“Some people would tell you let me go, if I die, I die. But it is more than that, because when I was over there, if they had told me something like that happens, I would not believe it. It was when I experienced it that I said is this how this country (China) is? I learnt a lot of things about life there.
Save over 5,000 Nigerians dying in Chinese prison, ex-inmate pleads
A former inmate, Mr. Onowu Chukwuemeka, who spent 15 years in Chinese prison, painted a grim picture of the daily horrors faced by the prisoners.
He revealed that the majority of Nigerians incarcerated there were wrongfully accused, with their court-appointed attorneys often compromised and working for the Chinese government.
According to him, the inmates are forced to work gruelling hours for various manufacturing companies, with promise of reduced sentences if they meet their targets. This, he said, is a cruel lie, as even those who work themselves to the bone are not granted any leniency.
“Inmates who fail to meet their quotas are subjected to merciless beatings, starvation and solitary confinement. The working conditions are deplorable, with no safety equipment provided.
“Many inmates have died from inhaling toxic fumes, melted plastics and other hazardous materials while assembling products like phone chargers, headphones and lamps.
“The meagre food they (prisoners) receive, consisting of half-cooked rice and vegetables, is barely enough to sustain them.”
Onowu noted that the Nigerian Ambassador’s visits to the prison and his attempts to address some of the horrifying issues during the administration of President
Goodluck Jonathan was the only spark of hope that had been seen by these hapless Nigerians.
“Even that effort eventually failed due to the change in government, leading to the cessation of visits from the Nigerian embassy.
“Under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, in spite of the outrage from the prison and human rights organisations, neither the Nigerian Ambassador in China nor his emissary made any effort to visit the prison again for the eight years of that administration.
“All the proposed negotiations with the Chinese government by the Jonathan government were apparently abandoned under the new government.
“The inmates now live in constant fear with the threat of solitary confinement silencing those who dare to speak out.
“The Dongguan Foreign Prison has become a nightmarish labour camp where Nigerians are exploited, abused and denied their basic human rights.”
Efforts to reach the prison authorities were impossible as they made all communications in their access portal in the Chinese language.
Against the foregoing, Onowu appealed to the federal government to, as a matter of urgency, intervene to secure the release of the innocent and put an end to the rampant egregious violations of human dignity going on in Dongguan Foreign Prison, China.
Spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Nigeria, Gui Jing and his Nigerian counterpart in Foreign Affairs Ministry, Amb Abu-Obe Eche, were yet to respond to our enquiries as at the time of filing this report.
-Source: The Nation
