As the baton cracked against the backs of his ankles, stinging the wounds he had sustained from hours of physical torture, Simon Cheng tried to suppress a guttural sound.
Blindfolded, the Scottish Development International worker could not see who was causing the victims such intense, horrific pain, but he knew for sure who they were working for: the Chinese state police.
In an exclusive interview to mark his release from prison five years ago, 33-year-old Cheng recounts the physical and psychological torment he endured at the hands of the authoritarian regime.
And in a message to his parents, whom he has not spoken to since fleeing the country after being released, he said: “I love you and I am safe.”
He added triumphantly, “My survival is in itself a victory.”
Simon Cheng, proudly wearing a Saltire lapel badge, stands next to Nicola Sturgeon at the start of what he thought would be a glittering career in global trade
A woman in Hong Kong holds a poster of Mr Cheng
A ‘tiger chair’ is a metal torture device that restrains the body from any movement and fixes the victim in painful positions. Chinese dissident artist Badiucao ‘Tiger Chair’ is depicted
Until the evening of August 8, 2019, Mr. Cheng had never considered himself a hardcore freedom fighter. However, he had attended a number of pro-democracy rallies in his native Hong Kong as a private citizen and supported the cause.
That summer evening, as he boarded the bullet train to return to Kong Kong from southern China after a conference, he thought everything would be fine: the Chinese authorities had let him into the country for work, so why wouldn’t they let him go?
He did have some reservations about his role in the recent protests, which have posed the biggest challenge to Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party yet. To top it all off, he sent his then-girlfriend a message saying, “Pray for me.”
The train stopped at West Kowloon station in Hong Kong and everything seemed fine.
But as he swiped his ID card and scanned his fingerprint, he became increasingly nervous. He looked expectantly at the steel barrier, his heart rate increasing with every passing second, but he refused to move.
“When I stood at that gate, it was a critical moment,” he said. “I knew I was in trouble.
“I immediately grabbed my phone and tried to delete all sensitive messages that criticized the Chinese government.”
He was soon captured by border patrols and taken to a small cell at the train station. His phone, bag and glasses were confiscated.
‘There were two guards just watching me, and then a couple of plainclothes guards came in. There was so much hostility.
“They looked at me like I was an animal,” he told The Mail on Sunday.
Despite several hours passing – and many desperate attempts to find out what he was being held for – Mr Cheng was put back on a train to Shenzhen and handed over to plainclothes police.
“They were no longer Border Force officers. They were the national security service,” he said.
In August 2019, Mr Cheng was arrested by Chinese authorities after attending a number of pro-democracy rallies as a private citizen in his home country of Hong Kong.
Mr Cheng is pictured shortly after his release in 2020
He added: ‘I kept asking them why I was detained, and they wouldn’t tell me, just told me to shut up. They put me in the back of a police van and took me to Lianhua police station. I still remember the signs when we arrived.’
The young man was forced into a small concrete cell measuring one square meter and strapped to a “tiger chair,” a metal torture device that holds the body in painful positions and restricts the victim’s every movement.
He said: ‘They asked me a series of very strange questions, like: ‘What were you doing here? And what do you think of Hong Kong?’
They then narrowed it down to three main questions.
First it was, ‘What’s your job? Why do you work at a British consulate?’ The second was, ‘Did you participate in a protest and was it legal?’ or something like that.
And the third was, ‘Do you know who has joined the protest and whether the UK is behind the scenes?’
They also showed me documents showing that they were monitoring me even when I was still in Hong Kong.’
The interrogation lasted for hours, until the officers finally gave up and left the young man lying on the cold, hard floor of the musty, damp-smelling enclosure.
“It smelled like death,” he recalls. “I had a kind of breakdown.”
I felt so much fear. I just kept talking, saying, ‘No, no, no, please. I didn’t do anything wrong.’
I haven’t done anything illegal and why are you treating me like this?’ I kept talking.
The next morning, all hopes of liberation were dashed when he was bundled into a police van and taken to another prison.
Mr Cheng grew up in Hong Kong and had a close relationship with his mother, father and sisters.
He had always hoped to make them proud; he had worked at the European Chamber of Commerce in nearby Taiwan and had even completed a year-long master’s degree at the London School of Economics, studying the political economy of Europe.
He was excited when he was offered a job at the British Consulate for the Scottish Government’s international development department in 2017.
Pictures show him posing with a smile on his face alongside then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at one of the many events he attended to promote the Scottish Government in the region.
He had hoped to become a star in the world of international relations, and by the time the photo was taken, he was already well on his way.
Yet his promising professional life was far from his thoughts when he was taken to the next interrogation cell on August 9, 2019.
Upon arrival he was confronted by people he mistook for ordinary Chinese officers, who were aggressive and wanted to attack him.
A clip released by Chinese police shows a man wearing a pink T-shirt admitting to breaking Chinese law. Police say the man was Simon Cheng and that he made confessions to an officer
What for, he still didn’t know, until they finally grumbled that he visited massage parlors and solicited prostitutes.
They told him that if he didn’t cooperate and confess, they would return him to the plainclothes officers and he could face more serious charges.
The charge gave them the right to hold him for 15 days.
If he does not cooperate with detention, it could be extended by two years for “education,” a reference to the Chinese camps where, according to the UN, more than a million people are being held, tortured and indoctrinated about the Chinese regime.
“So I confessed,” he said, “under duress.”
He was then handcuffed and tied up and taken to a detention center, where he would spend 14 days in solitary confinement.
His isolation was broken only by periods of intense and terrifying interrogations, sometimes lasting up to 48 hours.
Guards took him from his cell, blindfolded him, put a hood over his head, and placed him in the backseat of a car, then drove him to another location.
There he was verbally abused and humiliated, and told that he was a British spy.
Mr. Cheng was regularly chained in a straddle position and forced to crouch and raise his hands above his head for hours.
When he collapsed, he was beaten with a baton, causing excruciating pain. However, he was not allowed to scream or talk.
At his lowest and most vulnerable moments, his oppressors attempted to twist his way of thinking.
“They saw it as the perfect opportunity to brainwash me and say democracy was flawed,” he said.
But on August 23, 2019, at 4 a.m., Mr. Cheng was taken out of the detention center and led outside by guards.
His prayers had been answered: he would be returned to the Hong Kong border. He had served his sentence.
Now, five years later, he finds himself in shared accommodation in north-west London, having been granted political asylum by the British government in June 2020. A warning from a plainclothes officer on that final journey to “freedom” sticks with him: “Your life may get harder after you’re released.”
For while he cherishes the freedom he prayed for in captivity, his life has changed forever.
He can no longer dream of working halfway around the world in the profession he loves. He fears he will be captured and killed again. He is now considered a fugitive by Hong Kong’s national security agency and there is a HK$1 million bounty on his head.
He also fears that he has been followed on a number of occasions by Chinese agents on British soil and is unable to speak to the family he left behind for fear that they will be targeted by Chinese state police.
However, in a moving message via The Mail on Sunday he wanted to reassure his mother and father.
He said: ‘I want to say to them, I love you. I’m safe in England and in the UK, don’t worry about me. I’m well protected.
I hope you are well. I will continue to fight for our human rights.’
Mr Cheng is now raising awareness of the plight of Hong Kong residents and those like him living in exile through his diaspora group, Hongkongers in Britain, which operates in the UK.
He and others founded an online advice platform, Haven Assistance, for Hong Kongers seeking asylum.
“It’s like a mission,” he said. “It’s not about financial reward or how much I make, it’s about social justice.”
The young man added: ‘Just surviving, that’s enough for me.
My survival is in itself a victory over such a powerful state.’